Daniela Brighenti Photo
Menafee outside the courthouse.
The African-American cafeteria worker who lost his job after breaking a slavery-themed stained-glass window in Yale’s Calhoun College said he resigned as part of a quid-pro-quo agreement with the university not to pursue charges against him.
He kept his end. He’s still facing charges.
Yale has not yet persuaded the state to drop a felony charge against the former worker, Corey Menafee, whose case has sparked local and national outrage since this story appeared Monday in the Independent against both a campus and national backdrop of racial soul-searching.
Menafee showed up at state Superior Court on Elm Street Tuesday morning to a rapturous reception from dozens of demonstrators gathered on the courthouse steps.
Then he went inside for a scheduled court appearance. Dozens of supporters filled Courtroom A — it was standing room only — for the one-minute appearance, during which the judge continued Menafee’s case until July 26. Menafee faces a second-degree misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment and a first-degree felony charge of criminal mischief in connection with the window-smashing incident; he has yet to enter a plea.
A mass exodus from the courtroom followed his appearance. Outside the courthouse, Menafee told reporters that contrary to what Yale told the press Monday, the university agreed to seek to have his charges dropped only on the condition that he resign
“If Yale wants to do the right thing, we will help them,” said Menafee’s lawyer, Patricia Kane, who met her client for the first time this morning at the request of local philanthropist Wendy Hamilton, who recruited her after reading Monday’s article about Menafee. “There was an agreement for him to give back his job in exchange for not being prosecuted.”
“I signed it,” Menafee said. He said he could not produce a copy of the report.
Menafee — who does not own a phone or computer and was unaware of the public support until he arrived at the courthouse — seemed slightly dazed as he walked down the courthouse steps, fist-bumping with activists and judicial marshals to cries of “Free Corey Menafee!” from the assembled demonstrators.
“I didn’t know I was supported this much. I didn’t realize what I did had such an impact on other people,” he said.
Yale University spokesman Tom Conroy issued a statement Tuesday repeating the claim that Menafee voluntarily resigned; and stating that Yale is asking the state to drop the charges.
Yale University police originally arrested Menafee on June 13. As cafeteria workers gathered in the dining hall for a staff appreciation event that day, Menafee used a broomstick to knock down a stained-glass panel that depicted two slaves carrying bales of cotton. He later told the Independent that he found the image “racist and degrading.” It followed a year of controversy about whether Yale should continue to name the residential college after ardent slavery advocate John C. Calhoun, a former vice-president; and over what kind of art should hang there.
Kane met Menafee at the courthouse Tuesday morning as he was applying for a public defender. She offered him her services pro bono, and he gratefully accepted.
In an interview, Pamela George, who works as an assistant dean at Yale and joined the demonstrators in a crowded courtroom, condemned the university’s actions.
“He’s not the problem,” George said of Menafee. “It’s the continued injustice and disrespect of people who are offended by images of slavery, and the racism that continues to go on in the institution that is Yale.”
Asked about the alleged quid-pro-quo resignation agreement after Menafee’s court appearance, university spokesman Conroy sent the following statement to the Independent:
“The employee apologized for his actions and subsequently resigned from the University. The University has called the State’s Attorney and requested that charges not be pursued. Yale is also not seeking restitution.”
Asked specifically when the call was made and whether an agreement between Menafee and the University in fact existed, Conroy wrote that “actually, we requested that the charges not be pursued. I believe [it] was a written request.” He did not specify whether the agreement exists, and did not reply to a third request for comment by the time this story was published.
But on Monday, in another statement, Yale Vice President for Communications Eileen O’Connor told the Independent that the university did not make an agreement with Menafee requiring him to resign in exchange for the charges to be dropped.
O’Connor could not be reached for comment on Tuesday morning following Menafee’s court appearance. (Update: After this story was published, O’Connor stated: “An agreement exists but there is no mention in that agreement of a quid pro quo about dropping the charges if he resigned. I’m not going to go into all of it because personal, some is personal issues. It’s about how he’s going to resign. … We worked with his union to work out, to help work out this issue.”)
Menafee, 38, has injected new drama into a racially charged dispute that has roiled Yale’s campus since last summer. Calhoun College — named for infamous slavery proponent Calhoun — served as the epicenter of year-long protests by students and faculty who called for the college to be renamed and for the removal of racially-charged artwork from campus. In April, university President Peter Salovey announced that Yale would keep the Calhoun name. But in recent months, Head of Calhoun Julia Adams has worked independently of the university to remove racially charged artwork, including paintings of Calhoun, from the college building.
Menafee’s case has refueled the Calhoun naming debate during quiet summer months when most students are away from campus. Over the last three months, activists have vehemently denounced Salovey’s decision to maintain the Calhoun name and the slavery-themed artwork throughout the college’s buildings.
The activist group Unidad Latina en Accion, working alongside members of the Center for Community Change, organized a demonstration in support of Menafee outside the courthouse Tuesday morning. About 50 community members attended the rally — including New Haven residents, current and former Yale students, and Yale employees.
Co-worker General stands in support of Menafee.
“He took a stick to that window and said he had enough,” said William General, a part-time employee for Yale Catering. “We don’t need another lesson in slavery. We get it.”
“The Yale faculty and students have led this movement, but the majority of New Haven residents are minorities and have to walk by and see this college, the signs, everyday,” ULA organizer John Lugo said.
Kica Matos of CCC made a similar case — noting that Yale continues to perpetuate a hostile working environment for Menafee and others like him, who feel antagonized by the public display of panels like the one he struck down.
“Every day he has to walk into a college named after one of America’s biggest proponents of slavery,” Matos said. “What he did was a service to Yale, to all of us.”
Angelina Xiang, a rising senior in Calhoun College, said students are also disturbed by the images, and that Menafee did something a lot of students also wanted to do.
The window, before Menafee smashed it.
Menafee, who has worked in Yale’s dining halls since 2007, has a degree in mass communications from Virginia Union University. He previously worked for a management services company, and as a substitute teacher.
“He’s very bright,” Kane said. “A college-educated dishwasher. What is wrong with this picture?”
“He’s a writer,” she added. “He’s not been able to get a job in the field that he’d like to be in.”
She added that Menafee is not looking to be rehired by the university, because it would not offer him a positive work environment. (Menafee told the Independent on Saturday that he regretted actions that cost him a job he loved.)
The judge in Courtroom A, Philip A. Scarpellino, noted that the University is seeking to retrieve 27 pieces of broken glass that were collected by the police department after the panel broke.
“Yale can wait for their glass,” Scareplleino told the crowded courtroom, “and hopefully won’t put it back together.”
As news of Menafee’s arrest spread, support groups sprang up to help him financially as well as condmening Yale and calling for redress. One example is this letter drafted by Yale law students. It states, in part:
“For decades, primarily Black dining hall workers have served primarily White students beneath Arcadian depictions of slavery in a college named for man who devoted his life to their servitude. Yet you privileged the sentimentality of rich White donors over racial equality by keeping that name. You patronizingly explained that we should value the name “Calhoun” as a history lesson, even though it relegates Black staff and students to continue to work and live under the shadow of slavery.
“And now you have called the police on a Black man for shattering an image that celebrates Black bondage. You called the police even though Mr. Menafee presented no immediate threat and you would never have done so if Mr. Menafee were a student. Most shamefully, you called the police in full knowledge of the humiliation of arrest and the potential consequences of prosecution for him and his family.
“Yale does not exist in a vacuum. Yale’s relationship with a majority-minority New Haven has often been challenging. But this task should be easy. You recently announced your commitment to a “better Yale,” and the need for “inclusivity and respect.” You can honor that commitment by ensuring that another Black man’s life is not needlessly destroyed by the the criminal justice system. What Mr. Menafee did was a service to the University, Yale students, Yale workers and the New Haven community. ”