Good O' Boy Roundup Report - March, 1996


e) Allegation of a "running nigger"
T-shirt and OIG findings

Hayward claimed that in 1989 the T-shirts "were everything." Whatever he meant by that, the only T-shirt he described as having seen that year was a T-shirt with "a silhouette of a black person with a large Afro running and it had a bull's eye on it." He referred to it as the "running nigger" T-shirt. None of the other 559 interviewees from any Roundup reported ever having seen such a shirt at a Roundup. Hayward did not allege that any were for sale.

Hayward's claim of a "running nigger" T-shirt being present at the Roundup is unsupported. We found no one else who had ever seen such a shirt at any time. Furthermore, Hayward changed his story. In his affidavit written in July 1995 he claimed that this shirt was present at the 1991 Roundup, but in his October OIG interview he claimed to have seen it in 1989.