Prof. Scully's Response on 9/12/07

I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday afternoon when I read a newspaper article about Maegan Williams, a 20 year old African American woman from Charleston WV. The story was buried on the third page of the West Virginia University student newspaper, the Daily Athenaeum. I was horrified to read how six white individuals ---a mother and son, a mother and daughter, and two other white males--- ranging in age from 49 to 24, kidnapped, raped, stabbed, and sexually abused Ms. Williams for over a week in Logan County, WV.

I later read other articles that provided more details about how Ms. Williams was forced to eat rat and dog feces, drink from a toilet, burned with boiling water, beaten, choked, called a nigger and told that all of this was happening because she was Black. My stomach turned, my head spun and heart hurt.

The emotional part of me thought “How could this have happened?” I was in total disbelief that human beings could treat another human being so badly.

The intellectual part of me, however, was not surprised at all. We live in the United States of America. This is a country that is deeply rooted in racism. According to the founding fathers of this nation, Black people were not really human. We were considered to be two-fifths property and only three-fifths human. We endured the horrible legacy of slavery, Black Codes, Jim Crow segregation, lynching, discrimination in employment, housing, education, banking and aggression against all remedies proposed to resolve racial disparities. Part of our history and culture includes serious violence against people of color committed by white citizens. A large of part of history and culture includes violence against women. So, intellectually, it was easy for me to understand how the nightmare in Logan County occurred.

This is not just a case about crazy demented socially isolated criminally inclined and violent individuals harming another human being. This case is also a product of ignoring racial hatred in America. You see, ever since we declared our selves to be living in the post-Civil Rights era, America has drifted in to a state of denial. We seem to believe that since there are civil rights statutes our racial problems are solved. Most of us no longer openly embrace white supremacist philosophy. Outright blatant racism is considered to be socially unacceptable. We condemn it. But so long as racism is not blatant, we ignore it. We tolerate racial jokes and embrace the concept of equal opportunity while fully ignoring racial disparities that persist in present day America. We try to pretend that everything is racially all right….. until something like the Logan County atrocity occurs.

And then, some of us, hopefully, will face reality…..a violent, cruel and shocking reality. The truth of the matter is that the six individuals who held Ms. Williams captive come from a culture filled with unfathomable violence and racial hatred; a culture that has too many examples of how to dehumanize people in general and black people and women in particular.

While I was thinking about all of this, I got on the internet and googled “Logan County”. The eleventh entry on my google search was a 55 page report written by the West Virginia Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights Commission in August 1995. It’s title was “Rising Racial Tensions in Logan County, West Virginia”. Among other things, the report stated “racial tension…in Logan County…has been allowed to escalate because there is a general tendency….to avoid problems involving racial differences until they reach crisis proportion.” This particular statement was made in regards to discrimination that was occurring in secondary schools.
But it seems appropriate to mention in this context here and now.

The way I see it, we all have a choice. Every one of us who picks up a newspaper and reads the story of the horror that Maegan Williams endured has a choice. We can read it, shake our heads, look down at our feet, perhaps say a prayer, and move on with our day OR we can read and respond. I am choosing the latter alternative.

I am haunted by this incident. And I know that there are many other citizens in the state of West Virginia and the country who are equally disturbed by this case. We need to act. We need to express our support for Maegan Williams and her family. We need to condemn the acts of the six individuals who perpetrated these crimes. We need to acknowledge the fact that racial slurs and racial comments were poured upon Ms. Williams’ already suffering mind and body. We need acknowledge that this type of harm causes psychological trauma for the victim, the perpetrators, and all of us who witness the event either through reading about it, listening to radio reports, or watching the news on television. We need to acknowledge that organized racial hatred groups exist all across America and because of this, what happened to Maegan Williams could have happened anywhere. Unfortunately, however, it happened in West Virginia. So we bear the burden of addressing it. I believe that the citizens of West Virginia should call on the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI to promptly investigate this racially motivated crime of torture and pursue it accordingly. We should also ask our Governor, and the Governor of every other state in the nation, to speak out against hate crime with an unwavering commitment to end tolerance of racial hatred.

West Virginia has often been the victim of bad publicity. Ask people what they know about West Virginia and they immediately think of poverty, ignorance, poor health, college students who drink too much and study too little, coal mining disasters, and now the racially and sexually charged nightmare that has invaded Maegan Williams’ life and ours.

West Virginia has an opportunity to speak out against racist violence to set an example for the rest of the nation. Our silence will do nothing but encourage more bad publicity….but our voices speaking passionately about violence against women and people of color could bring us one step closer to a society that is truly worthy of respect.


Judith A.M. Scully
Professor of Law
West Virginia College of Law

to be free from hate

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