The University of Richmond School of Law used to be called the T.C. Williams School of Law, but woke activists at the school decided Williams’ name had to be stripped because he owned slaves.
The descendants of Williams responded by saying, fine, return all the cash our family has given to the school.
This is great.
FOX News reports:
Descendant of donor demands law school pay back $3.6 billion after ‘woke activists’ stripped school nameA descendant of a major donor to a law school demanded that the institution pay back $3.6 billion after a decision was made to change the school name.Virginia lawyer Robert C. Smith is the great-great-grandson of T.C. Williams, the name behind the University of Richmond’s T.C. Williams School of Law.Williams was a wealthy 19th-century businessman who owned tobacco companies, a graduate, and trustee of the University of Richmond. William’s family donated $25,000 to fund the law school following his death.However, despite Williams’s estate regularly donating to the university, the T.C. Williams School of Law was stripped of its name.The University of Richmond School of Law voted to adopt a policy that prohibits the university from naming any building, program, professorship or entity “for a person who directly engaged in the trafficking and/or enslavement of others or openly advocated for the enslavement of people.”The university had found that Williams was a slave owner.Records show that William’s businesses were taxed on owning 25 to 40 enslaved people. The university said personal tax records for Williams show that he was taxed on owning three enslaved people.Smith pushes back against the move to de-name the law school, claiming that the university is caving to “woke activists” and would not exist without the $3.6 billion amount of financial contribution from generations of Williams’ family members.
The letter that Smith sent to the school is worth reading in full, but the conclusion is the best part.
Via Real Clear Markets:
It is clear that woke activists at the University orchestrated a “Tony Soprano” hit on the Williams family. You won’t release any of the documents we have requested because it will expose this deceit. Radical Leftists hate people of accomplishment; they are jealous of them, and therefore they must be destroyed. The Williams family represents everything the Left hates; religious, upright, learned, accomplished and wealthy. The Law School was not named the T.C. Williams, Sr. Law School. If your board had any gratitude, it could have easily left well enough alone as certainly T.C. Williams, Jr. had no “connection to slavery.” Indeed, the 1934 Law School catalogue contains a full-page portrait of T.C. Williams, Jr. and lists him as its “chief benefactor.”The university’s endowment is $ 3.3 billion. Since you and your activists went out of your way to discredit the Williams name, and since presumably the Williams family’s money is tainted, demonstrate your “virtue” and give it all back. I suggest you immediately turn over the entire $3.3 billion endowment to the current descendants of T.C. Williams, Sr. We will use it all to fulfill the charitable purposes to which it was intended. We will take a note back for the remaining $300 million, providing that it is secured by all the campus buildings and all your woke faculty pledge their personal assets and guarantee the note.Give the money back.
As I’ve said before, I don’t know why any school has to change its name for this reason as long as Yale is still named for Elihu Yale. He played an active role in the slave trade but none of the woke activists at Yale are lobbying for a name change because they want to be able to say they went to Yale.
Featured image via YouTube.
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