As a Republican state senator who secretly recorded conversations for the FBI testified Thursday that he couldn’t explain why he called black customers of a casino “aborigines,” Alabama’s Democrat leader called for his resignation and the Republican Party chairman defended his reputation.
“I don’t use that term normally. I don’t know where it even came from that day,” Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale testified Thursday in federal court, where he is a key prosecution in a statehouse corruption case.
Beason was the first witness in a trial of nine people accused of buying and selling votes for pro-gambling legislation. He wore tape-recording equipment for the FBI in its investigation. Transcripts of the recordings were used by the prosecution to bolster its case and by the defense to challenge Beason’s credibility.
In one transcript, Beason and two other Republican legislators were talking about economic development in predominantly black Greene County and the customers at one of the county’s largest employers, the Greenetrack casino in Eutaw.
“That’s y’all’s Indians,” one Republican said.
“They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” Beason replied.
http://newsone.com/nation/associatedpress2/scott-beason-blacks-aborigines
