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Steve Fischer, the State Bar of Texas director who's come under fire for offensive Facebook comments, has admitted being "intemperate" online and apologized. "I need to be careful about what I say. I really do. I need to look and say, 'Hey, calm down.' Write it out before you post," Fischer said during a Texas Bar board meeting Monday. "Where I felt I did wrong, I do apologize. I need to work on it, and I have been working on it." During the meeting where lawyers called on Fischer to resign, and fellow board members condemned his conduct, Fischer offered an explanation of the situation leading to his comments. He said he was defending Texas Bar president Larry McDougal, who couldn't defend himself at the moment because he was undergoing cancer surgery. Fischer offended attorneys on Facebook in an exchange with a white female attorney when he stated that the only thing she did to advance civil rights was that she was "married to a Black."

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Read more: 'Married to a Black': Steve Fischer's Critics Want Him Out

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'This Is Klan Language'

Ginger Weatherspoon, the lawyer whom Fischer was speaking to, said during public comments at the meeting that Fischer's posts were racist. She said she can spot racist comments because her great-grandfather was part of the Ku Klux Klan. Her grandfather stated he was not racist, but would read Klan brochures to her and her sister when they were young. Weatherspoon said her grandfather later disowned her for marrying a Black man, saying she should "marry her own kind." When Fischer wrote that Weatherspoon's contribution to civil rights was to "marry a Black," she said, to her, it meant that because Weatherspoon was a white woman, she had upgraded her African American husband's status through marriage. "This is Klan language. This is hate language," Weatherspoon said. "It was hurtful to me, and there was no apology to me. Steve needs to be removed from this bar immediately." |

'I Was Pretty Vicious'

The controversy over Fischer's posts came after a bigger firestorm erupted from online comments by McDougal about Black Lives Matter, a female attorney's appearance, and an image of a police officer pinning a man on the ground and said, "Justice: It usually happens before the trial."

Steve Fischer. Photo: Angela Morris/ALM

Fischer told board members at Monday's meeting, which was called to discuss McDougal's comments, that as the controversy was erupting, he learned that McDougal had to have emergency cancer surgery. Fischer noted in an interview that his own mother died of cancer. "I told Larry, 'I'll deflect. I'll get some of these comments, and you just get better,'" Fischer said. "I went on there, and I was pretty vicious." He said that his comments to Weatherspoon started after he deleted her post on the Texas Family Lawyers Facebook group, where she linked to a news article about a St. Louis couple who held guns in front of their home during a Black Lives Matter protest on their street. He said that Weatherspoon called him a racist for deleting her link. But Weatherspoon said she was not the person who posted the article that Fischer deleted from the page. She said other attorneys had said the article should be re-posted. Weatherspoon added that she did not accept Fischer's apology to the bar board, because he didn't take responsibility for his conduct and instead tried to blame others. "He's now blaming me; he's blaming the fact his mother died of cancer; he's blaming the fact that Larry is sick," she said. "He spews hate. It's bad. ... This man needs to be removed from any position of authority in the state of Texas as an attorney." Their back-and-forth conversation spiraled downward from there, according to screenshots of the comments that Houston attorney Lori Laird sent to Texas Lawyer through Twitter. It was Weatherspoon who first commented that she had married a Black man and had three Black sons. "I have no reason to believe Steve is a racist and they are trying to paint him out to be some thing that he's not by taking these cherry [picked] responses out of the middle of a conversation where she used foul language and was the aggressor," Laird wrote in a direct message. "I just think people should see the entire string and then let them make their choices." Read the comments: But Melissa Thrailkill, who said during public comments at the meeting that Fischer should resign, submitted to the bar board a longer listing of comments Fischer has posted on Facebook. "Mr. Fischer is extremely divisive," Thrailkill wrote in a written comment. "His words and actions toward other Texas attorneys must be revealed, as they speak volumes. Over the years, and especially most recently, he has isolated attorneys based on race and gender. ... He has created more harm than Mr. McDougal."

Read Thrailkill's comment