Believes Background, Not Race, Was Important to Siskiyou Voters : Redneck County? Not So, Says Its Black Sheriff

Charlie Byrd, 39, in his third month in office as the first black sheriff ever elected in California, doesn’t consider Siskiyou a redneck county.

He ought to know. He was born and reared in this sparsely populated county of 42,000 along the Oregon border. He has lived here all his life.

“Conservative, yes. Redneck, no,” insists the 6-foot-2, 250-pound Byrd, who grinned and added: “I’m a redneck when it comes to crime.”

Byrd was a policeman for 18 years in his home town of Weed--population 3,000--and chief of police there for 11 years before becoming sheriff in January.

Siskiyou County, fifth-largest in the state with an area as big as Rhode Island and Delaware combined, is 92.7% white, 4.8% American Indian and Latino and only 1.5% black. Weed, with 400 blacks, boasts the only black community as such in the entire county.

Only one other black officer has ever served in the Weed Police Department. All of Byrd’s deputies are white, although there is a black jailer.

How does Byrd account for his popularity, for beating out five other candidates for the office in last year’s June primary and for winning 60% of the votes in November’s runoff? He defeated veteran Sheriff’s Capt. Ken Jourdan, 42, with 18 years in the department.

“People judged me on my past performance, not on the color of my skin,” Byrd said. “They know me. I ran on my record. In the election I talked about what I wanted to see in the way of law enforcement in this county.”

Scott Crawford, managing editor of the Siskiyou Daily News published in Yreka, the county seat, described the race for sheriff as a “tough campaign, but the cleanest I’ve ever seen. There was no mud-slinging. Race was not a factor in the voting or sentiments of the voters.”

He recalled that Jourdan spoke in great detail about his experience with the Sheriff’s Department. Byrd’s platform, he said, was based on his knowledge of people and law enforcement.

“They are both good men. But the operation of the department under the previous sheriff was controversial,” Crawford noted. “A lot of voters tied Jourdan to the previous administration. They wanted new leadership.”

“Yes, this is an extremely conservative county. Many consider it redneck country,” he admitted. “Yet Charlie Byrd is one of the most popular and well-liked individuals in this county, if not the most. He is an extraordinary human being.”

Jim Eckman, 43, social studies teacher, cross-country and track coach at Yreka High School for 17 years and former city councilman and mayor of Yreka, was Byrd’s campaign manager.

“I think toward the end the race factor helped us in a reverse way,” Eckman mused. “I think many voters thought, ‘By God, just because we live up here in the boonies with only a few black residents, we’ll show people from outside that we’re not a bunch of rednecks.’ ”

Jourdan, interviewed at his captain’s desk across from Byrd’s office, expressed the same sentiments. He said he felt many people voted against him “because they believed they would put Siskiyou County on the map by electing a black sheriff.”

(California has had one other black sheriff, Eugene A. Brown, who was appointed in San Francisco County in February, 1978, and served two years. He was defeated in November, 1979, when he ran for the office.)

Eckman said some subtle racism surfaced in the Siskiyou campaign. “There was a certain element in the county that let it be known: ‘We don’t want a nigger sheriff.’ And Charlie received a few pieces of hate mail. But it was not a significant factor. . . .

“We wanted to personally touch base with as many voters in the county as possible, to let them meet Charlie, born and raised here, one of their own. Some of the people in the hinterlands--and we have places that are really way off the beaten path--had never seen or met a black person. We always made sure a white guy went along with Charlie when he went door-to-door.”

It was, said Eckman, the most expensive political campaign in the county’s history--$30,000 for Byrd’s campaign, $20,000 for Jourdan’s.

Charlie Byrd’s mother and father moved to Weed from Louisiana in the early 1940s to work in a lumber mill in the small town. A number of families, black and white, came to Weed from the South when the lumber company headquartered in Louisiana opened its facility in Northern California.

Byrd was the second-oldest of nine children. His father died years ago. He lives with his mother in Weed, commuting 28 miles up Interstate 5 to the sheriff’s headquarters in Yreka.

“All of my brothers and sisters have done well for themselves. Both my parents worked. I wouldn’t say we were a poor family. We never went without,” the sheriff recalled.

He went through elementary and high school in Weed, where he played tackle on the football team. He attended College of the Siskiyous in his hometown. He had planned to become a civil engineer but, when he was a 19-year-old college student, the Weed police chief asked him to become a reserve officer. He enjoyed police work and joined the department full time two years later.

“What I like about law enforcement is helping people,” Byrd said. “I have always tried to be fair to everyone. That is the most important thing I can think of.”

Over the years he has been active not only in police work but also has served as director of the Siskiyou Food Bank and been a volunteer with the Salvation Army and other charitable groups in the county. He has worked closely with the administration and several campus organizations at College of the Siskiyous. He is an active Rotarian.

Byrd, a bachelor, says he hopes to get married someday but hasn’t found the right woman yet. He puts part of the blame on the fact that law enforcement is demanding. “Marriage is an important contract one doesn’t take lightly,” he said.

Drug-Related Crime

As police chief at Weed he earned $28,000 a year. As sheriff he is paid $46,000 annually. He said the campaign cost him $5,000 out of his pocket.

As for challenges of his new job, he noted that Siskiyou is a quiet county except for drugs. “Almost every major crime in this county, as in nearly all of the sparsely populated mountainous counties in Northern California, is drug-related,” he said.

“Last year 61 persons were arrested for cultivating marijuana in remote areas of the county. There has been an influx of (illegal drug) labs from Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Those operating the narcotics labs have been moving up from the cities, hiding out in places difficult to detect.

“We have a lot of talent in the Sheriff’s Department. I need the help of everybody. I am tapping that talent and putting it to good use,” he said.

Gas station operator Glenn Rizzo, 39, who went through school with the sheriff, calls Byrd’s election “something historic for us.”

“Yes, I was surprised when Charlie became police chief in Weed, but I wasn’t surprised when he was elected sheriff,” Rizzo said. “He showed his quality as a police chief. We knew he would make a good sheriff.”

‘With the number of rednecks in this county, I’m amazed Charlie Byrd was elected. He’s a real down-to-earth person, a common-sense, no-nonsense sheriff.’--Siskiyou County sheriff’s switchboard operator