Exclusive: Meet Yale Dishwasher Corey Menafee, Who Smashed Racist Stained-Glass Window | Democracy Now!

16.7.16

Exclusive: Meet Yale Dishwasher Corey Menafee, Who Smashed Racist Stained-Glass Window | Democracy Now!: As Black Lives Matter protests have swept the country in recent weeks, we end today’s show with the story of one dishwasher at Yale University who has decided to take the university’s history of racism into his own hands—or his own broomstick, in this case. Corey Menafee worked for Yale for about eight years. In June, as he was cleaning a dining room in Yale’s residential dorm Calhoun College, Menafee stood on top of a table and used a broomstick to break a stained-glass window depicting enslaved Africans carrying bales of cotton. Menafee said the image is racist and degrading and that he had become sick of seeing it every day. Calhoun College is named after former Vice President John C. Calhoun, one of the most prominent pro-slavery figures in history. For years students have demanded Yale change the building’s name. Yale University police arrested Menafee and charged him with reckless endangerment and felony mischief. But on Wednesday, after Yale students and community members demonstrated in support of Menafee, Yale University announced it has dropped the charges. We speak to Corey Menafee and Craig Steven Wilder, author of the book "Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities."