Aftermath
Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, brought a wrongful death suit on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald in federal court in the Southern District of Alabama. The official court transcript shows that the original concept as charged in the complaint was considered too vague to hold up but Judge Alex T. Howard Jr. helped refine the legal theory of agency which held the Klan accountable for the acts of its members and thus kept the case from being dismissed before it could go to the jury. The Klan was hit with a $7 million wrongful-death verdict in the case. The settlement bankrupted the United Klans of America. The Donald family was given the deed to the UKA meeting hall in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Beulah Mae Donald used the settlement to buy her first home. She died September 17, 1988. The incident served as a springboard for other legal cases against racist groups across America.
In 2006, Mobile renamed Herndon Avenue as Michael Donald Avenue. Mobile's first black mayor, Sam Jones, presided over the small gathering of Michael Donald's family and local leaders at the commemoration.
Donald's story was turned into a 2007 novel Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard.
His murder was explored on the National Geographic's "Inside American Terror" in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Michael Donald
Famous quotes containing the word aftermath:
“The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)