A Cayce official was accused of making racist comments. What the city investigation found

An investigation into allegations of racist comments made by a former Cayce museum commissioner affirmed that he made them.

After the investigation was discussed during a Cayce City Council meeting Monday, Councilman Phil Carter said that if the city “had a racist on the museum commission all these years, we didn’t know it. Apparently, now we do.”

One of the investigative findings, as reported by city attorney Danny Crowe at Monday’s council meeting, was that former museum commissioner Marion Hutson declined to deny making the racist statements even though he was asked directly by Crowe if he wanted to. Hutson declined to be interview as part of the investigation, Crowe said.

The investigation found that a city employee who reported Hutson’s racist remarks was “trusted and highly creditable” and that no evidence existed that she had “ill-motive” in reporting Hutson’s remarks.

The investigation concluded that “the available and credible evidence fully supports the content of the City employee statement.”

The investigation into Hutson’s remarks included interviews with people on a voluntary basis.

The investigation also found that Hutson had previously made “racially offensive” remarks at a commission meeting. The report doesn’t give any additional details on these remarks.

The investigation also sought to find out if the commission had other racist members or if it had a broader cultural issue.

Two findings were that a group of museum commissioners are resistant and antagonistic toward city staff and that the museum doesn’t represent Cayce’s Black history.

The museum commission is made of five white men, two Black women and one white woman, Crowe noted in his report.

A “significant issue” at the museum is that a group of commissioners and a former chair who advises the commission oppose changes to exhibits in the museum by city staff, Crowe reported. Certain commissioners “manage, control and encumber” the city’s museum staffer. The city’s website names Andy Thomas as the city’s museum assistant. The report doesn’t detail what changes were blocked by the group of commissioners.

The commission seemed to be “stuck in the mud” about changes to the museum, one commissioner said.

Crowe, who visited the museum, said that while it has interesting items, the overall feel is “dry and static.”

The “antagonistic” commissioners go so far outside of the commission’s advisory role that they complain the city, which owns the museum, improperly interferes with it. The group has “an inappropriate view that the commission should be ‘independent’ of the city despite city creation of the commission and city ownership, staffing and financing of the museum,” Crowe said. The report doesn’t identify the antagonistic commissioners but calls them “a small control group.”

The investigation found that the commission had no broader racist or cultural issue, but did note the museum had few items or exhibits on Cayce’s Black history. The appointment of the two Black commissioners in 2021 was a commendable effort by council to diversify the commission, Crowe said.

But public comments noted that “pro-Confederate” guides were used for the museum’s 2017 Christmas tour, prompting one person to ask during the investigative interviews, “What does the Confederacy have to do with Christmas?”

By the end of Crowe’s presentation, James “Skip” Jenkins suggested that the commission may need to be dissolved and council may need “to start from scratch” with the commission.

The antagonism by some commissioners toward the city and staff “should not be supported by council,” Mayor Elise Partin said.

“Making some people feel smaller or less than adequate axnd the aggression toward staff, these things are not what a volunteer commission ... should be doing,” Councilman Tim James said.

Councilman Hunter Sox said the investigation “illustrated problems” with the city’s appointment process for commissions.

The appointment process has become a flashpoint for council, with Partin supporting the current process, which gives council carte blanche to appoint and remove commissioners with few requirements for applicants beyond applying and listing credentials. Sox and Councilman Phil Carter have suggested a more rigorous appointment process which could include interviews of applicants and background checks.

The Cayce Historical Museum Commission helps in the operations, fundraising and volunteering at the city’s museum at 1800 12th St. The museum “Studies and preserves the history of the area and acquires and exhibits historically significant works,” the city’s website says.

‘The incident’

“The incident,” as Crowe called it, that led to the probe happened in November.

On Nov. 2, Hutson told a Cayce city employee who was voting in Columbia’s mayoral election that Cayce’s neighboring city “did not need another colored person as mayor” and went on to discuss the ethnicity of the various candidates for the job, according to an email from the unidentified staffer.

“(Hutson) stated that there were three colored people, and that one was an Arab, running for the mayor,” according to the email, which was read at a Nov. 9 meeting of Cayce City Council. “(Hutson) then stated that in the past more than one white person had run for the mayor which split the vote causing Mayor Benjamin to win.”

Steve Benjamin, Columbia’s first Black mayor initially elected in 2010, did not seek re-election for a third term last year. The mayoral candidates in Columbia’s Nov. 2 election were Daniel Rickenmann, who is white; Tameika Isaac Devine and Sam Johnson, who are Black, and Moe Baddourah, who is a native of Lebanon.

Rickenmann defeated Devine in a runoff.

On Nov. 9, Cayce City Council voted 3-2 against immediately removing Hutson from the commission, with Partin and Jenkins voting in favor of Hutson’s removal. Carter, James and Sox voted against but called for an investigation into Hutson’s comments.

By the end of that week, Hutson resigned from the museum commission. He had served on it for more than 20 years. He previously declined to make a comment to The State.

In his resignation letter, Hutson wrote that “seeing the community and the nation divided as a whole, I prefer to see the community be united as one. Therefore, I am voluntarily resigning my position. ... I will continue to pray that the betterment of the community prevails.”

The city later learned of other comments made by Hutson. While campaigning for Sox during the campaign for Cayce’s November election, Hutson made multiple references to “colored people” being in too many positions in the city, according to an email sent to council members and read aloud at a meeting. Sox denounced the views expressed by Hutson

Appointments

Also on Tuesday, the city council moved forward with filling two appointments, including Marcy Link Hayden to take the open spot on the museum commission.

Hayden is a member of the state recognized Pee Dee Indian Tribe and works in its development and member department, according to her application to the council. She has a background in anthropology, archaeology and government affairs. She worked as the program coordinator and manager of Native American affairs for the South Carolina Commission for Minority Affairs. She also makes indigenous crafts.

Hayden has pushed for the establishment a South Carolina Indigenous Peoples Day.

Also earning a spot on the city’s beautification commission is Kelly Wuest, who unsuccessfully ran in November for the city council seat now held by Sox.

The appointments had been another sore spot for the still freshly elected city council, which voted 3-2 to delay filling the vacancies in November. The vote was split along the same lines as the earlier vote on removing Hutson.

Sox, who brought up the vote for the delay in November, called for the appointment of Hayden and Wuest Tuesday. The two were unanimously confirmed.

At its last meeting of 2021, leaders of the city’s neighborhood associations urged the council to work together to “right any wrongs and to represent all our citizens for the good of all in our community in all of its diversity.”

This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 12:38 PM.