A county commissioner in Oklahoma has resigned after allegedly being recorded discussing the murder of journalists and lynching Black Oklahomans with members of the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office.
The McCurtain Gazette-News reported that after a March 6 county meeting, officials discussed killing a reporter that works for the paper, and making racist comments toward Black people. The conversation is allegedly captured on an audio recording, and was released online publicly over the weekend.
The Oklahoma Governor’s Office confirmed Wednesday morning that it had received a handwritten resignation letter from McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings.
“I will release a formal statement in the near future regarding the recent events in our county,” Jennings wrote in the letter written on white-lined notebook paper.
The McCurtain News-Gazette identifies Jennings as the speaker who wished to return to a time of lynchings in the transcript of the recording,
“But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got,” the transcript reads.
Jennings, 59, took office Jan. 4, 2021, as a Republican. Outside of his county duties, he owns a local logging equipment company.
Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt on Monday had called for the county officials to resign. Stitt’s office didn’t comment publicly Wednesday morning beyond releasing the copy of the resignation letter.
McCurtain County found itself the center of nationwide controversy when the McCurtain News-Gazette, a local print-only newspaper, accused county officials of plotting to kill Gazette reporters while making hateful comments about Black people after a March 6 meeting.
A portion of the recordings was released online over the weekend, and though the audio matched some of the quoted material in the story, The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network, could not independently identify the speakers in the recordings.
The recording allegedly occurred on the same day a lawsuit was filed by a Gazette-News reporter against county officials in federal court.
The lawsuit was brought March 6 by McCurtain Gazette-News reporter Chris Willingham against the McCurtain County Board of County Commissioners, the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Kevin Clardy, and county investigator Alicia Manning.
Stitt had called for the officials to resign after the Gazette-News published its account.
The sheriff’s office on Tuesday said it was investigating whether the newspaper’s recording was made illegally and if it was being reported inaccurately. Officials did not provide an explanation for the content of the recording.