Family of law school donor: "Refund, please."
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/13/richmond-university-slavery-name-removal/
Robert C. Smith is not happy with the University of Richmond.
Smith, a Richmond lawyer who graduated from the university’s law school, is the great-great grandson of T.C. Williams, one of the school’s early and prominent benefactors. Until last year, the official name of the university’s law school was the T.C. Williams School of Law.
Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.But that ended in September when the university’s board voted unanimously to change the name to the University of Richmond School of Law following the adoption of a policy that prohibits the university from naming any building, program, professorship or entity “for a person who directly engaged in the trafficking and/or enslavement of others or openly advocated for the enslavement of people.”
Williams, a graduate and trustee of the university whose family donated $25,000 to fund the law school following his death, was a wealthy 19th-century businessman in Richmond who owned tobacco companies. According to the university, census and local government records show that Williams was also an enslaver whose businesses were taxed on owning 25 to 40 enslaved people. The university said personal tax records for Williams show that he was taxed on owning three enslaved people.“Since you and your activists went out of your way to discredit the Williams name and since presumably the Williams family money is tainted, demonstrate your ‘virtue’ and give it all back,” Smith wrote in the letter, first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I suggest you immediately turn over the [school’s] entire $3.3 billion endowment to the current descendants of T.C. Williams Sr.” He said the university could write a note for the remaining $300 million “providing that it is secured by all the campus buildings and all your woke faculty pledge their personal assets and guarantee the note.”
