A tribute to one of America’s greatest injustices received a farewell when a black dishwasher used a broomstick to send a stain-glass panel depicting slaves carrying cotton crashing to the floor.
The incident occurred at Yale University, one of the country’s oldest higher education institutions, after an employee grew tired of staring at the offensive image every day, the New Haven Independent reported. Corey Menafee had been working at the university since 2007 when he destroyed the "racist, very degrading" panel that had been hanging in Calhoun College, a residential hall named after the pro-slavery former vice president John C. Calhoun. He revealed in an interview that glass fell on a woman walking by, but she was not injured.
"I took a broomstick, and it was kind of high, and I climbed up and reached up and broke it," Menafee told the New Haven Independent. "It’s 2016, I shouldn’t have to come to work and see things like that."
Menafee quickly headed to the bathroom to look presentable before police arrived to arrest him. "I just went to the bathroom and shaved to make sure I was clean-shaven for the authorities," he said.
Menafee was hit with a second-degree misdemeanor charge for reckless endangerment and a first-degree felony charge for criminal mischief. While he hasn’t yet entered a plea, he expressed regret for his actions.
"It could be termed as civil disobedience," he said. "But there’s always better ways of doing things like that than just destroying things. It wasn’t my property, and I had no right to do it."
Still, the university deemed him a potential threat to students and he is no longer working there. According to Eileen O’Connor, Vice President for Communications at Yale, he "subsequently resigned" after apologizing for his actions. She went on to say that the university "will not advocate that the employee be prosecuted in connection with this incident and is not seeking restitution."
