Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 3, 1993 TAG: 9309030062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: HOUSTON LENGTH: Medium
He couldn't take it any more in Vidor, Texas. There had been too many threats, too many nights of wondering if the whites of Vidor would decide to use the darkness as a time to take him out.
So Simpson left Vidor on Wednesday, the last black to stay on in what is known as one of the meanest towns in the South, where the common wisdom for a black man is to be gone by sundown.
He went to nearby Beaumont. And there, as he was standing on the street late Wednesday night, he was gunned down in an apparent act of random violence. Authorities blame suspected black gang members.
All that fear in Vidor, only to have his life end when he thought those long nights of danger were over.
Simpson was a homeless manual laborer who became a minor celebrity in these parts because of his willingness to move to Vidor, a town that, as far as anyone can remember, had not had a black resi Simpson dent for 70 or more years. It was known as "Bloody Vidor" and had a reputation for being a stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan.
No black in his right mind would have moved to Vidor, was the common wisdom. Few even stopped there for gas.
But then came a court order last September in which U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice ordered the desegregation of public housing projects in 36 Texas counties. One of those projects was the 70-unit Vidor Villas on the outskirts of town.
When word got out that Vidor was about to be desegregated, the Klan went to work, holding rallies and urging that the town of 11,000 be kept all white.
Into this came Simpson, a giant 7-foot man with a noticeable limp from a construction accident. Simpson was not the first black to move to Vidor in the wake of the desegregation order. That title was held by John DecQuir, 59, who moved into Vidor Villas in February.
At first, things seemed to be going well. Simpson attended church and would regularly make his way to the soup kitchen there. But then, as time passed, the situation at Vidor Villas grew worse.
The epithets became more graphic. Someone called in a bomb threat. Police had to be stationed in the housing project 24 hours a day. Two black women who moved into the project with their five children in July left a month later after all of their numerous job applications were turned down.
DecQuir moved out, leaving only Simpson, who by then had stopped going outside for fear of becoming a target. Finally, he decided it was time to move on.
Wednesday he was gone, back to Beaumont and to his death. At about 10:45 p.m., Simpson was standing on the street talking to a woman named Lydia Faye Washington.
Four black men drove up in a dark colored car, apparently bent on robbery. One of the robbers first shot the woman, then turned and fired at the 300-pound Simpson. Police said he was shot at least five times.
Washington, the woman talking to Simpson, identified the killer as someone she knew. A 19-year-old man was arrested Thursday for the slaying, police spokesman Butch Pachall said.
"This appears to be a random, senseless robbery," said Beaumont spokeswoman Zena Stephens.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB