After serving on the city council for 14 years as its youngest member, the soon-to-be State Senate Pro-Tem Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman) believes he is an authority on his hometown of Cullman and its residents.
So when recent accusations spread online about the city being a racist "sundown town," he was quick to jump to Cullman's defense. Now, he's taking it a step further by offering to match radio host Dale Jackson's $1,000 reward for anyone who can produce proof of a sign warning black people to leave the city.
Jackson, who hosts WVNN's "The Dale Jackson Show," came up with the challenge after AL(dot)com published a story about Cullman "battling its 'sundown' legacy," and shared videos of TikTok influencers also calling it a sundown town — "was, is, forever will be."
"I'm going to go ahead and put it out there right now. I'm going to match his $1,000 if anybody else does bring it, so now it's up to $2,000," Gudger said Tuesday on "Rightside Radio" with host Phil Williams.
Since the controversy began, Gudger has been researching the history of the alleged sign. He said he found something similar mentioned in an 1874 edition of the Montgomery Advertiser. However, it made no mention of race.
RELATED: No, Cullman is not a 'Sundown town' — 'The furthest thing from the truth'
"It talked about people coming in to Cullman that had a passion, and if you didn't have a passion for what you did, then you didn't need to be in Cullman. It did not say anything about race at that time," he said. "And then from that, it came up again in 1910 and 1937, but what's amazing, Phil, is that in every one of these articles that I pulled and did research on, no one has stated that they've seen the sign. It was always a sign that was here before they started to talk about it, even in 1910.
"And so, there's not a sign out there, hasn't been a sign. So when people like this TikTok influencer and then was just copied and pasted onto AL.com, the front page, it puts a shadow over the hard work and the good people in Cullman, Alabama… Cullman is growing leaps and bounds, and it's just not fair to the people that are here in Cullman."
Gudger said the Cullman Christkindlmarkt, which attracted the sundown town accusers after it was featured in Southern Living, is expected to draw over 250,000 people to Cullman over the next four weeks.
"For someone just to automatically assume that we're a sundown town in today's society is just asinine to me," he added.
Gudger said AL(dot)com has yet to contact him or the city about the claims in their article. He said there may be grounds for a defamation lawsuit if a public apology is not issued soon.
"I believe that there's going to be some type of action being taken if they don't do that pretty quick to the City of Cullman and the mayor of the City of Cullman, Woody Jacobs."
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