‘A knee on the neck’: Durham County ousts manager in racially divided 3-2 vote
The Durham County commissioners ousted County Manager Wendell Davis on Thursday in a pair of 3-2 votes the board’s two Black members called racist.
“Sitting before me I see a rope, a knot and a tree,” Commissioner Nimasheena Burns said. “And I have nothing else to say.”
“What I am left with is a knee on the neck,” said Chair Brenda Howerton. “The knee on the neck of a Black man.”
The board voted after a roughly 45-minute closed session. Commissioner Wendy Jacobs made the motion to not renew the manager’s contract. Commissioner Heidi Carter seconded the motion.
Jacobs, Carter and Nida Allam voted in favor of terminating Davis’ contract, which expires June 30. None of them commented on their votes.
The board then voted by the same 3-2 margin to immediately relieve Davis of his duties.
Burns and Howerton opposed both motions.
The News & Observer called Davis, Jacobs and Carter after the meeting. None responded to a request for comment.
Howerton called ousting Davis, “a top performing business professional,” one of the most racially motivated acts she has witnessed in her 12 years of service and said it followed his accusing Carter of racism in February 2020.
“Why the rush?” Howerton asked. The board hasn’t reviewed Davis’ performance appraisal, addressed county employees’ racial bias concerns or followed up on the recommendations of a consultant who found dysfunction in county government, she said.
“We must first put in the work of examining ourselves and then make a decision from a healthy place,” she said before the votes. “I am imploring that we work together in unity for a fair and just resolution.”
Thursday’s action also sends a chilling message to Black staff, Howerton added.
“It is a loud and clear message that the commissioners are accountable to no one,” she said. “And if we offend or are racially insensitive to county employees, you had better keep your mouths shut or you will face our wrath.”
Durham political groups took sides
Davis, whose salary is $226,001, has overseen the county’s 2,000 employees and a more than half a billion dollar budget.
Thursday’s vote follows months of community debate in which the city’s influential political groups lined up for and against the manager.
In a statement, The People’s Alliance asked city and county leaders to appoint managers who share elected officials’ progressive philosophy.
The Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People sent the county a letter asking that Carter recuse herself from any discussion about Davis’ contract.
Since Davis was hired and his five-year contract was approved, most members of the county board have rotated off except for Howerton and Jacobs.
2016 contract vote
The five-member board has previously voted along racial lines on issues such as hiring and firing county managers and controversial developments.
Davis, who was deputy county manager from 1999-2011, was hired in 2014 by a board composed of Fred Foster, Howerton and Michael Page, who are Black, and Jacobs and Ellen Reckhow, who are white. Jacobs cast the one dissenting vote against hiring Davis.
In June 2016, Foster, Howerton and Page voted in the 3-2 majority to give Davis the five-year contract, which protected him from a changing board.
The contract stipulated Davis would be paid for any time within that five years if he was fired without cause.
Foster and Page remained in office until two new commissioners, Carter, a school board chair who ran as a public schools advocate, and political newcomer James Hill were sworn in the following December.
After the 2016 vote on the contract, Lavonia Allison, former chairwoman of the Durham Committee who spoke at the meeting, described Jacobs and Reckhow’s initial votes against the contract as “racial.”
Allison tied the issue to Davis’ pushing the Durham Public Schools for greater accountability, especially on student achievement. The system’s roughly 31,000 student population is majority Black and Hispanic.
Davis when weighing school board budget requests, has noted DPS has one of the highest per-pupil spending rates among the state’s larger school systems but the poorest scores on third- and fifth-grade proficiency tests.
With his contract ending, some political observers suggested that Davis wrote his letter accusing Carter of racism in an attempt to keep his job. Carter questioned it coming so close to an election.
But Davis, in an interview with The N&O last year, said county managers come and go and his letter was about decency and respect.
“My sharecropping mother and father fought these fights so that I can write new chapters in life,” he said. “I don’t expect to have to rewrite their chapters. I want to write new chapters so that my two children can write new chapters as well.”
2020 election
Three years later, in February 2020, as Carter faced a field of 14 others vying for five commissioner seats, Davis sent her a letter accusing her of disparate treatment of him and his staff.
The letter followed a school funding discussion, in which Carter said she was proud of the work staff had done on a plan to pay for construction needs but didn’t like how long it had taken after the board “made it clear” it was a priority.
“I’m frustrated that it took a near emergency,” Carter said. “I feel like if the direction had been given from management to you all, we could’ve gotten this sooner.”
Davis said that was one of several instances in which the first-term commissioner had disparaged him, The N&O reported.
“For some, but not so obvious reasons, you have taken several opportunities to make disparaging remarks about me,” he wrote in a letter to Carter. “I am now concerned that it is due to an inherent bias that you harbor not merely towards me, but people of color in general.”
The letter cited other examples, including Carter telling an African American woman with a doctorate “you are so articulate,” Davis wrote.
Initially Carter called the claims in the letter baseless and said her record showed her commitment to racial equity, but she also apologized at the end of October.
“Looking back, I recognize that my defensive reaction perpetuated a familiar defensive response by a white person, especially in the midst of ongoing anti-Black violence in this country,” she said.
The apology followed an investigation by a consultant, Duke University Professor James E. Coleman Jr., who found no racist intent in Carter’s criticism and that some staff perceived Jacobs as micromanaging.
Given the “often-fractured relationship” among the board, manager and staff, Coleman stated, the manager and his staff “reasonably could have perceived” Carter’s criticism at the February 2020 meeting as racially biased, at least implicitly so.
Coleman said the tension had put Durham County government in “a state of periodic dysfunction.”
New board in December
In December, a new board comprising incumbents Carter, Howerton, Jacobs and newcomers Allam and Burns was sworn in.
In February, the commissioners agreed to racial equity training and other steps.
In March, the People’s Alliance released its letter questioning Davis’ contract.
Millicent Rogers, co-president of the People’s Alliance, told The N&O that it is a time for change in Durham. The new Board of County Commissioners, likely the first all-woman county board in North Carolina, should not be bound to the kind of contract Davis had been given by a previous board.
Next, the Durham Committee and the Friends of Durham weighed in, saying Carter should recuse herself from discussing Davis’ contract and the commissioners should instead focus on addressing the dysfunction outlined in the consultant’s report.
“It is our fundamental belief that no employee should be subjected to a toxic work environment,” said Antonio Jones, chair of the Durham Committee. “Furthermore, it is time to stop disrespecting, scapegoating and gas-lighting Black county employees for political appeasement.”
Last month leaders from the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Durham, Durham Clergy United, and the city’s Racial Equity Task Force joined Durham Committee and Friends of Durham leaders in a news conference outside county offices downtown.
“We are watching Durham get progressively ill,” said Elaine O’Neal, former chair of the Racial Equity Task Force. “We see this as a perpetuation of a culture of anti-Blackness.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2021 at 3:06 PM.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREThe News & Observer has reported on tension within Durham County Government the last several years. Here is a timeline of recent events to give context to what led up to today.
February 20, 2020: In a letter, County Manager Wendell Davis accuses County Commissioner Heidi Carter of having a racial bias towards him and people of color in general. Carter calls the accusation “baseless” and claims he was trying to sabotage her campaign for county commissioner.
April 28, 2020: Durham County moves forward to hire an outside attorney to investigate the situation. The county hires James Coleman Jr., a Duke University School of Law professor, as a legal consultant.
July 22, 2020: An anonymous tip leads the International City/County Management Association to investigate Davis for ethical wrongdoing. The organization clears Davis of professional misconduct.
August 20, 2020: Coleman’s report is released.
▪ It describes Durham County government has being in a state of “periodic dysfunction.”
▪ Coleman states he did not believe the incidents Davis discussed in his letter reflected intentional racial bias on Carter’s part.
▪ Because of the “often-fractured relationship” among the board, the manager, and staff, Coleman states the manager and his staff “reasonably could have perceived” criticism Carter made towards Davis at a February meeting as racially biased, at least implicitly so.
▪ “Commissioner Carter’s offense at being unfairly called a racist, and the offense taken by her colleagues and supporters, divert attention from assessing how others are impacted by her sometimes abrasive style,” Coleman wrote.
▪ Some employees felt micromanaged by commissioners, Coleman wrote. A footnote cites as an example an interaction between County Commissioner Wendy Jacobs and Davis.
October 27, 2020: Carter publicly apologizes.
▪ “Looking back, I recognize that my defensive reaction perpetuated a familiar defensive response by a white person, especially in the midst of ongoing anti-Black violence in this country,” she said.
February 2, 2021: The new Board of County Commissioners agree to undergo racial equity training. Commissioners Chair Brenda Howerton encourages the board to participate as a response to Coleman’s report.
March 9, 2021: The People’s Alliance, a political group, publishes a letter questioning parts of Davis’ contract, calling it “extremely lopsided against the community’s interests.”
▪ A spokesperson for The PA tells The N&O she does not think Davis supports “the progressive values of the community, particularly in regards to funding public schools.”
▪ Some Black community leaders question the group’s motives.
March 25, 2021: The Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, a political group, asks Carter to recuse herself from any discussion about Davis’ contract.
▪ Carter refuses to recuse herself at a public meeting. In a statement to media outlets, she cites state statutes requiring her to vote.
April 14, 2021: Several Black political leaders denounce a ‘culture of anti-Blackness’ in Durham County government at a press conference.
▪ Elaine O’Neal, a former judge and chair of the city’s Racial Equity Task Force, asks the board to halt decisions about Davis “until the commission no longer operates out of the current dysfunction.”
