Talbot County’s arguments that Black people do not have “standing” to pursue a court challenge to a monument to white supremacy on the county courthouse lawn are “outrageous,” “shameful,” and “willfully blind,” plaintiffs suing for the monument’s removal argued Friday in court papers.
The plaintiffs are seeking a court order to remove the Confederate monument and in a strongly worded legal filing outlined the cruelty, pain, and anguish actually inflicted by the monument and the county’s dismissiveness toward Black people’s concerns, according to a press release from the ACLU of Maryland.
“It is unfortunate,” the plaintiffs’ filing begins, “but all too predictable” … “that in responding to the complaint in this case about the unlawful Confederate statue on its courthouse grounds, defendant Talbot County presents the viewpoint of a majority white legislative body as though it were fact, while avoiding any serious effort to confront the cruelty and illegality of its conduct toward Black people. …
“In characterizing the response of Black residents to the Talbot Boys statue as merely offensive, the County ignores the unique place of Black citizens in the eyes of the law, and reveals how little it knows (or cares) about the impact that racism and the legacy of slavery in this country and in its own backyard have on its Black residents.”
The filing includes sworn statements from the plaintiffs detailing the actual injuries they suffer from their forced encounters with the statue.
Plaintiff Kisha Petticolas, a Black attorney who has spent her entire legal career in Talbot County, first as a judicial clerk, then as the county’s first Black assistant state’s attorney, and since 2011 as the only Black public defender at Office of the Public Defender’s Easton office, says the county is flatly wrong it its claims that the statue is merely offensive to her. In fact, she says, the personal anguish she experiences on account of the statue is like a “knife lodged in her soul.”
“To say that the statue pains me every time I walk by it is an understatement — it is a trauma I have had to endure many times weekly throughout my 15 years of practicing law in Talbot County. The statue causes a pain that cuts deeply; one that I have learned to swallow every time I walk into the courthouse. The statue has created a wound that never truly gets the chance to heal.”
Talbot County NAACP Branch President and individual plaintiff Richard Potter strongly agrees:
“Seeing the statue over and over throughout my life has not dulled the pain of what the statue represents. In fact, it has amplified the pain I feel, the longer that the statue remains on the courthouse grounds while the world and society’s views on Confederate statues begin to change around it. It is a thorn in my side that becomes more imbedded, more painful, and more infected with the passage of time.”
Speaking on behalf of the plaintiff NAACP, organizational and community elder Walter Weldon Black, Jr., a former president of both the Talbot NAACP Branch and the Maryland State NAACP, said:
“[T]he presence of the Talbot Boys monument is outrageous and reprehensible, as discrimination stifles people’s ambitions while it closes the doors of opportunity. When Black people are made to feel as a second-class citizen by white society, they believe they are unable to achieve, as white society will not accept them.
“This symbol of white supremacy at the courthouse — maintained by County edict as the highest monument at the courthouse — combines with the fact the staff at the Talbot County courthouse is almost completely white to send a clear message to those looking for fair opportunities at the courthouse, whether be in employment, public services, or for justice through the court system, that they are unlikely to find fairness or equality of treatment there.”
The lawsuit contends that Talbot County’s homage to white supremacists and traitors to the United States and to the State of Maryland cannot remain on government property because it is not consistent with the core promise of the Fourteenth Amendment: Equality to all Americans under the law.
The Maryland Office of the Public Defender, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Petticolas, and Potter are represented by attorneys Daniel W. Wolff, David Ervin, Kelly H. Hibbert, Suzanne Trivette, Tiffanie McDowell, Alexandra Barbee-Garrett, and Ashley McMahon of Crowell & Moring LLP, and Deborah A. Jeon and Tierney Peprah of the ACLU of Maryland.
Go to the ACLU’s website to view the response brief, other legal documents, and additional information at https://www.aclu-md.org/en/cases/opd-et-al-v-talbot-county.
Grenville B. Whitman says
It would help to know what the defendants claimed so your readers can understand what the plaintiffs are complaining about.
Did the defendants question the plaintiffs'”standing”?
I am grateful that the Spy is staying on top of this important local story!
Ron Jordan says
The audacity of the city council and Talbot’s county administration is beyond the complete idiocy that I thought that people with half a brain should know they don’t have standing. To actively protect a relic from the past within a nation that is finally coming to grips with racism and prejudice it has wrought on its citizens since its inception. You stand to keep this relic of hatred on the lawn of the court that is supposed to mete out justice to all its citizens. Who can be so stupid and inhumane? This statue doesn’t stand for heritage except the enslavement of human beings many who are the children of the ancestors the county and citizens of the nation had enslaved and you all want to keep this reminder in front your black citizens every day, it is unconscionable and despicable. To have a sworn officer of the court for 15 years and the only black attorney in Talbot county have to look at the callousness of her administrators is also despicable, but you expect her to as officer of the court to be fair and unbias but each day, bias stares her in the face, have “you all no shame.”?
Every politician that has allowed this statue to continue to take its place in front of the house of justice in Talbot county should be removed from office and they should never ask to or seek justice as they don’t understand what justice and fairness is. This statue is the embodiment of white supremacy, terror and hate, remove it!
Steven Park says
As others have said before now, the plaintiffs in this case need to have a deeper appreciation for the history and context surrounding the statue. Talbot County residents were involved in many sides of that civil war, all of which paints a deeper understanding of the conflicts and resolutions. It is a teaching moment that would be removed from our consciousness if the plaintiffs position were to go forward and succeed. Try this more detailed explanation of the history by David Montgomery…https://youtu.be/OjBVSUoLfyA