The series of endeavors on the part of the town of Cottage City to rid itself of the now notorious Rocker family culminated last Friday in a performance, the true story of which reads more like the report of a riot in a Louisiana parish, or like a leaf from some yellow-colored “Life on the Border,” or like a chapter from Reade or Dickens on the administration of the charity laws in the old country, than like the simple account of the removal of the local authorities of a poor family, located in a New England town, to the paternal care of the government of the State of Massachusetts.
The Martha's Vineyard NAACP this week called for the immediate dismissal of John Dillon, a Tisbury police patrolman who has been charged with racism by a fellow officer.
In a three-page letter to the Gazette, the NAACP lists a series of alleged offenses by Mr. Dillon, highlighted by an incident in which the officer parodied stereotypical African-American speech when rewriting a computer document authored by Theophilus M. Silvia 3rd, the town's only year-round African-American patrolman.
Tisbury police officer John Dillon -- who has been under fire from the NAACP for allegedly racist acts against the town's only African-American patrolman -- is on indefinite paid administrative leave this week.
Charges of racism erupted this week at the Tisbury police department, with the town's only African-American year-round officer saying he has been the subject of harassment, jokes and even an offensive caricature displayed in the station.
The allegations of Theophilus M. (T.M.) Silvia III, filed over a period of 12 months with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, were made public this week by the Vineyard chapter of the NAACP, where officials were dissatisfied with the town's response to the issue.
Attorneys on both sides of a bitter, four-year dispute which centers on painful charges of racism against the town of Tisbury and its police department announced yesterday that a settlement has been reached in the case.
Attorneys for Theopholis M. (T.M.) Silvia 3rd and the town of Tisbury said yesterday that the terms of the settlement are extremely complicated and will not be disclosed until the agreement is approved by both the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and a Superior Court judge.
Two young girls from New Jersey got their first exposure to overt racism this week when they returned from a morning walk into downtown Vineyard Haven and found a racial slur spray-painted in letters two feet tall in the street by the house their family was renting at Clough Lane and Pine street.
Tisbury police are investigating the vandalism that happened Wednesday — possibly in broad daylight — and police chief John McCarthy is looking into whether the incident should be considered a hate crime.
The opinions were as varied as they were emphatic: There have been great opportunities lost in the area of civil rights. Poverty affects 43 per cent of all black children in the United States, the same proportion as it did the year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Still, African-American people are better off than ever before, and a recent poll showed that most are, in fact, content.
