I was proud to learn this week that the historically Black church where I was christened as a baby, where I attended Sunday school and where I received the spiritual foundation for my life had won a $2.8 million judgment against a racist hate group that attacked it.
Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., where Frederick Douglass, Oprah Winfrey and former President Barack Obama have also worshipped, was vandalized in 2020 by members of the Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group.
The church sued the Proud Boys in January 2021 after members of the group destroyed a Black Lives Matter sign on church property during the mayhem around a December 2020 rally for President Trump.
The Feb. 3 ruling from D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier — just in time for Black History Month — means the Proud Boys can no longer use the Proud Boys name and “clears the way for the church to try to seize any money that the Proud Boys might make by selling merchandise like hats or T-shirts emblazoned with their name or with any of their familiar logos,” The New York Times reports.
When my daughter Breanna heard about the ruling, she remembered an older case I had taught her about an SPLC lawsuit against another hate group — the Ku Klux Klan — for the lynching of Michael Donald. Breanna compared the two cases and said they both offered hope for the fight against racism. She also said of the Proud Boys case, “The judge had to be a Black woman! I love that she wears locs.”
Decades ago, on behalf of Michael Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, the SPLC filed a groundbreaking civil suit against the United Klans of America, alleging that its members conspired to kill the young man. An all-white jury in Mobile, Alabama, returned a historic $7 million verdict in 1987 against the United Klans, bankrupting the group.
The verdict marked the end of the United Klans, the same group that had beaten the Freedom Riders in 1961, murdered civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo in 1965 and bombed Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, killing four girls. The group was forced to turn over its headquarters to Beulah Mae Donald.
The church’s win this week against the Proud Boys gives me hope in the fight against present-day racism, even in the face of an administration that seems intent upon crushing all efforts to make our country more inclusive. I’m hopeful in the Together We Fight campaign the SPLC launched this year to champion human rights for all and stop hate and racial injustice.
I look forward with hope as young people like my daughter remember the lessons and victories of the past and present — and how they might aid us in the fight for justice in the future.
Brad Bennett is the director of editorial services for the SPLC.
Picture at top: In a photo from Jan. 14, 2017, immigrant rights advocates hold a rally at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington to protest then President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies. (Credit: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)