a plaintiff in the lawsuit to force charlottesville to keep its confederate monuments is suing a local black activist and professor for making true statements about his family's history of slave owning.
there is a hearing today on a demurrer in the case.
acluva.org/en/news/i-was-…
there is a hearing today on a demurrer in the case.
acluva.org/en/news/i-was-…
as a fellow descendant of several of virginia's first families, i can promise you there is nothing false or defamatory about this statement. 
we are not our ancestors. no one is trying to hold tayloe personally accountable for the actions of his great great grandfather. but refusing to reckon with that legacy of racism & cruelty is despicable. suing a black woman for talking about it does make you a racist.
this rich old white dude wants one million dollars because a black woman talked about how it was bad, actually, that his family has been violently racist for centuries.
the full text of the original complaint is here and it is a REAL DOOZY
c-ville.com/wp-content/upl…
c-ville.com/wp-content/upl…
the @cville_weekly piece that hurt tayloe's feelings so badly that he filed a million dollar lawsuit is online here:
c-ville.com/the-plaintiffs…
c-ville.com/the-plaintiffs…
@cville_weekly today's hearing is on the defendant's demurrer. the full text of the ACLU's memo in support of the demurrer is here:
acluva.org/sites/default/…
acluva.org/sites/default/…
@cville_weekly from the ACLU's memo on the demurrer: there is no need to contact the descendants of slave owners to verify whether or not the actions of their ancestors were harmful to black people.
we should not need to settle this kind of thing in court in 2019.
we should not need to settle this kind of thing in court in 2019.
@cville_weekly the hearing will be held in a courthouse whose entrance is guarded by a statue of a confederate soldier, placed there by a committee led by a county prosecutor who supported the extrajudicial murder of a black man.
@cville_weekly the hearing in this suit alleging it is defamatory for a black woman to talk about the history of slavery will be held in a courthouse that was once a meeting space for the klan. in a courthouse on whose steps enslaved people were once bought and sold.
@cville_weekly if you are interested in the actual history of charlottesville's confederate monuments & what these people are suing to protect, i encourage you to go on one of drs schmidt & douglas' historical tours. if you can't, i livetweeted one a few months ago:
jalane is not just a pillar of this community, she is my friend. watching people like tayloe abuse the court system to try to force this entire city to venerate his family’s racist past is fucking sickening.
a massive crowd outside the courthouse cheers for defendants dr jalane schmidt and lisa provence after a judge sustained the demurrer, ruling it was neither defamatory nor libelous to write about tayloe’s family history of violently abusing the humans they owned.
