A Florida city’s first Black woman firefighter filed a lawsuit against the city after her face was swapped with a white face in a mural.
Latosha Clemons, a former deputy fire chief of Boynton Beach, is accusing the city of defamation and negligence after her image and an image of retired fire chief Glenn Joseph were replaced with images of white faces.
“Being depicted as white was not only a false presentation of Clemons, it was also a depiction which completely disrespected all that the first female Black firefighter for the city had accomplished,” a complaint filed in April read, according to The Guardian.
“I was like ‘Wow, why did this happen,’” Clemons said at a press conference in June of 2020, as reported by WPTV News. “I was hurt, I was disappointed, and then I was outraged.”
The city’s former arts manager, Debby Coles-Dobay, said she felt “pressured” to make the change. She was fired after the mural was unveiled in June of 2020—before it was removed after a day—and the fire chief was demoted. Last year, mayor Steven Grant told WPTV that he believed the fire chief asked for the removal of the two firefighters from the mural because they were no longer with the department.
“The City Commission will meet in a closed-door session to discuss the litigation. It is not a public meeting,” City Manager Lori LaVerriere told CNN.
Clemons was the city’s first Black female firefighter in 1996 and worked for the city for 26 years. A second amended complaint filed in September read that it hopes to “redress the defamatory statement [the City of Boynton Beach] made regarding her race and/or its negligence in failing to properly oversee an approved use of the likeness of Clemons.”
“It’s a reflection of the community itself and all those young girls who can walk by that station, look at that mural, and their hopes and dreams are shattered by the defacing of that,” Clemons said last year.
