For those who refuse to believe that racism is alive and well, check out the story below. A group of blacks in Zanesville, Ohio just received a $10.9 settlement resulting from a lawsuit in which they indicated that they were literally denied water. The blacks in that town had to walk a distance to fill buckets so they would have water. Hello? Yes, you read that right. All the whites in town had water but they managed to deny water—a basic human right, to the blacks in town. Hopefully, now that they are wealthy, they can move out of that run down shanty town.
Kennedy, now 58, is black. His neighbors, who did not have running water for more than 50 years, are also black. On July 10, the U.S. District Court of Ohio awarded them almost $10.9 million, ruling that they had been denied access to public water because of their race.
The decision comes four years after the water started flowing in Coal Run, a black community of some 25 homes in overwhelmingly white Muskingum County, following a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) and 67 Coal Run residents. According to the suit, the community had repeatedly requested water service since 1956, the year the city built a water main that ended just short of the neighborhood, and had watched as the East Muskingum Water Authority built new water lines and increased county water efforts in surrounding areas while their requests went unanswered. When he built his house in the early 1980s, Kennedy says, his water request was denied. He can’t even remember the number of times he asked the city’s service director for help, only to have nothing happen. Then a house went up next door. A white family moved in, and one day Kennedy saw his new neighbors watering their lawn. “They’d be out there with a hot tub out on the porch,” he says, “and I was still going down the road [to the local water treatment plant] with a pickup truck every day.” Like many Zanesville area residents, he couldn’t drill a well because the surrounding coal mines have contaminated the water, rendering it undrinkable. The mines have been closed for years, but the ground is so full of sulfur that residents say the water runs red. In Coal Run, Kennedy and his black neighbors would either pay to have water hauled in from the treatment plant two miles away or catch the rainwater that ran down their gutters.
GO HERE to read the remainder of this bizarre situation
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At least the ruling in their favor shows that now there is justice when racists are caught, up to no good.
But 50 years, it seems like $10.9 million is not enough. How about $50 million? A million for every year?
I thought about that also (that the judgment is low) but I was not going to comment on it because I did not want to seem ungrateful. But you have a definite point.
Wow, I missed this story. I did hear about it, but I recalled watching a similar story on one of those news magazines (20/20 or Dateline, etc.) about a rural white town (I forgot where) that also did not have running water for a while, but it was hardly 50 years. Something happened whereby the nearest water supply location was shut down and they had to drive to local areas to get water.
But I don’t know how those folks managed to live 50 years with no running water. And depending on the area population, I am sure that nearly $11 million award is a drop in the bucket. It is very hard to believe that there are places right here in the U.S.A. that are tantamount to living in a third world country.
Unbelievable…why wasn’t the NAACP all over that! 50 years…all I can do is shake my head!
Please! NAACP stands for ‘Never About Anything ‘Cept Posturing.’ There was nothing in it for them to gain, so why would they become involved?
They’ve always done squat on major issues like police brutality, although they supposedly have a ‘legal defense fund.’ The only real semblence of change was when Bruce Gordon was the President and he quickly and quietly left and made it known when he did, that it was because the administration there is more about posturing than actually doing any real work and he could not be a part of that sham.
LOL Diva…you are absolutely right!