Word: derwin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Their home on Glasgow Drive was also where the Browns hunkered down whenever Derwin caused one of his fire storms. Not long after joining the police force, he helped lead efforts to add more black officers to the ranks. Then, two decades later, he helped the push to unionize the department. In the 1990s, his wife and family say he became increasingly critical of the sheriff, Pat Jarvis, a retired Atlanta Braves pitcher, who eventually pleaded guilty to accepting kickbacks in a deal that sent him to jail for 15 months...
...eyes, Derwin Brown was the guardian of decency. He was the host of a public-access TV show, The Naked Truth 2000. Among his regular topics were local politics and society's war against black males. He also wrote a weekly column, "Tell It Like It Is," for the Champion, a black paper in DeKalb. As far back as 1994, he wrote that the Confederate flag "represents an act of treason, the enslavement, rape, murder and torture of Africans and African Americans. It is beyond belief that any sane person would want to preserve such a hideous legacy...
...while, Derwin had political aspirations. Some thought it was merely for the school board, but in 1996, he ran in a special election to replace the sheriff. He fared poorly at the polls. Four months later, he tried again and got only a fraction of the votes, losing to Sidney Dorsey, an Atlanta homicide detective who became the county's first black sheriff. The two men had a cordial relationship, but that turned when Derwin announced he was again running for sheriff. The moment television-news cameras caught jail inmates working on projects for Dorsey's wife, Derwin went...
...family and friends, Derwin wanted to be sheriff for reasons grander than ousting Sid Dorsey or cleaning up corruption. As Derwin saw it, jails are part of a prison-industrial complex for young black men. More than once, his brother Ron heard him describe prisons as a big business in which the mostly black inmates became "raw materials" in a heartless system set up only to bring in even more bodies. Says Ron Brown: "He saw the prison system as a modern form of slavery...
Though a Republican at heart, Derwin knew that victory lay with the Democratic Party, which predominates in DeKalb. Indeed, in the summer primaries, there were no Republican candidates. So a victory over Dorsey, the Democratic incumbent, would mean a virtual victory in November. The primary, however, was too close to call among the four candidates, and Dorsey and Derwin, the top two, were forced into a runoff. An already bitter battle dissolved into a war of personal attacks...