Racial Tensions Flare Anew in Protest of South Dallas Gas Station

Marcus Phillips was 26 and fresh out of prison for several robberies when he committed his final crime. One morning just before dawn, Phillips grabbed the cash register at a South Dallas gas station. The clerk picked up a shotgun and ordered Phillips down. Phillips ran from the store and across the parking lot, the cash register under his arm, the clerk not far behind. There was a struggle, more running, then another struggle. Then came a warning shot and a final, fatal blast.

Most of those now protesting the Diamond Shamrock Kwik Stop on Martin Luther King Boulevard never knew Phillips or even his name. But his death in 2010 has become a symbol in their fight to shut the station down. The dispute revolves around issues of race: Phillips was black, and the clerk—and the store’s owner—are of Korean descent.

“I didn’t expect it was going to explode like this,” Pak said of the encounter. “It was a personal argument.” Muhammad, 44, who was appointed to his post in 1994 by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, says Pak must go. So should other Asian-American merchants in black neighborhoods, he says. “They are just the latest in a long line of people who have come to this country—like Jews, Italians, Indians and now Asians—who have sucked the blood of and exploited the black community,” Muhammad said.

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