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A white Alabama councilman, who once used the phrase “house n****r” during a council meeting, was been arrested after assaulting a Black mayor, AL.com reports.
On Monday (November 7), Tarrant councilman Tommy Bryant was booked into Jefferson County Jail on a harassment charge following an altercation with Wayman Newton, the city's first Black mayor.
After a Monday city council meeting, local police chief Wendell Major said he was talking to Bryant in the parking lot of city hall when Newton approached them.
“The councilman told me, the mayor wants to see me, I turned around talked to him,” Major told ABC 3340. “The two exchanged words, then the next thing I know the councilman struck the mayor.”
Surveillance footage released by the Tarrant Police Department shows the three men standing by a truck for a few minutes before Bryant appears to strike Newton on the head.
“He started attacking me and verbally assaulting me. … He sucker-punched me,’’ Newton told AL.com. “[Bryant had] been on one all night. He’d made veiled threats against me.”
The councilman was released from jail late Monday night on a $1,000 bond.
According to reports, Bryant and Newton have had a contentious past. In 2021, the same year Tarrant elected its first Black mayor, the councilman was arrested on harassment charges after he allegedly shouted expletives and sexually explicit comments at Newton.
Bryant also faced backlash last year after he used the n-word during a city council meeting.
“Hey. Do we have a house n****r in here?" Newton previously said. "Do we? Hey. Would she please stand up?”
See the footage of Monday's incident released by the Tarrant Police Department here.
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