Fort Worth Councilman Under Fire For 'Colored' Remark

FORT WORTH, TX — A Fort Worth city councilman is facing considerable heat after telling a gathering at a campaign forum in an African American neighborhood that, essentially, some of his best friends were "colored."

Answering a question about social justice, councilman W.B. "Zim" Zimmerman, 74, said on Monday that two of his best friends in childhood during the 1950s were "colored," as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. The anachronistic term didn't sit well with many, but it's unclear if it was a slip of the tongue or a crude attempt to ingratiate himself with his audience.

After, he had a lot of explaining to do during an editorial board interview with the Star-Telegram as he is in the throes of keeping his District 3 council seat, a prospect now threatened with the emergence of challenger Brian Byrd.

“It was the old man in me,” Zimmerman explained Tuesday in a Star-Telegram Editorial Board interview about his campaign. During the meeting with the newspaper, Zimmerman spoke of growing up in integrated schools in San Antonio, one of the first cities to end school segregation in 1955 and the first to remove "colored" water fountains and public facilities in 1960, the newspaper reported.

While the largely African-American audience was stunned by the "colored" reference, some who were in attendance are giving Zimmerman the benefit of the doubt. Estrus Tucker, the moderator at the forum that took place at Como First Missionary Baptist Church, is among those.

"My gut reaction is that he didn't intend it to sound the way it sounded, " Tucker told the newspaper. “I don’t think the majority of the audience took it as disrespectful. It just really dated him."

A retired Lockheed Martin Aeronautics executive, Zimmerman represents the Lake Como section of the city along with much of west and southwest Fort Worth, including Clearfork, Overton Woods, Ridglea, Tanglewood, Westcliff, Westpoint and Western Hills.

The general election in Fort Worth is May 6. Zimmerman first won the election to represent the residents of Council District 3 on June 13, 2009, and was re-elected in May 2011 and May 2013.

The term "colored" to describe people was largely a linguistic creation of the 1960s, although its still used for historic names and references today.

>>> Read the full story at Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Photo via City of Fort Worth