Allyn Gibson Sr. had quite a legacy in Oberlin, Ohio, up until his death at 93 earlier this year.
Known as “Grandpa Gibson,” his goal in life was to be an upstanding citizen. Among the activities of his long life was marching with Martin Luther King Jr., and he once served Stevie Wonder and the singer’s entourage as bakery customers.
But the final years of his life were under the cloud of racist accusations stirred up by the local elite college.
The accusations affected the entire Gibson family and threaten to destroy their 137-year-old local business, Gibson’s Bakery.
And that’s despite a $31.6 million libel lawsuit (plus several million in interest) the Gibsons won against Oberlin and its former Vice President of Student Affairs, Meredith Raimondo, for their attempts to destroy Gibson’s Bakery beginning in November of 2016.
Although the case lost an appeal, Oberlin refuses to pay, so the meter continues to run with interest charges, bringing the judgment to more than $36 million, according to The Chronicle-Telegram.
Stirred up by Raimondo, hundreds of students marched on the bakery the day after Allyn Gibson Jr., on November 9, 2016, chased down and caught a black student who had shoplifted a bottle of wine from the Gibson bakery.
Two of the student’s friends, both black, intervened and, following a scuffle with Gibson, the three were arrested and later pled guilty to misdemeanor charges.
The following day Raimondo helped Oberlin students plan a protest and, wielding a bullhorn, she went with about 200 of them to demonstrate in front of the bakery, according to the UK’s Daily Mail.
Should Oberlin be forced to pay the settlement?
Students distributed a flyer calling Gibson’s “a racist establishment with a long account of racial profiling and discrimination.”
Student newspaper coverage of protests against Gibson’s included the line, “The social implications of being seen at Gibson’s are much worse than any freshman faux pas I can imagine.”
And students leading tours for potential Oberlin students to this day say Gibson’s is a place that shouldn’t be patronized, according to the Daily Mail, citing the Gibson family attorney Lee Plakas.
The bakery suffered to the point of eventually reducing the number of employees from about a dozen to three or four.
Affected by the publicity and student boycott, in November, 2017, Gibson’s filed a defamation suit against Oberlin and Raimondo.
In June of 2019, a jury awarded the Gibsons $40 million in damages, which was reduced to $25 million, plus $6 million for attorney’s fees.
Attorneys for Oberlin College filed an appeal, but a state appeals court denied it. However, the college, which charges tuition of $70,000 per year, still hasn’t paid anything to the Gibsons.
Oberlin has an appeal bond issued by Zurich American Insurance Company and says that money cannot be released until all appeals are exhausted.
Currently, both the Gibsons and the college are filing with the Ohio Supreme Court for and against the payments, but a court date to argue it has not been set, according to The Mercer County Outlook.
Oberlin has friends in its filing with the state supreme court. Filing briefs in favor of the college are the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the NAACP, the Student Press Law Center and the National Coalition against Censorship and Defending Rights.
So Grandpa Gibson lived long enough to see his name cleared — sort of — but not to see his family receive recompense for the suffering Oberlin caused them.
At least, not so far.
Tragically, his son, 65-year-old David, died under the same cloud in November of 2019 of pancreatic cancer. In the Gibson family lawsuit, David refused to allow the jury to know of his affliction because he did not want it to influence their judgment.
Plakis, the Gibson attorney, said the pain Oberlin caused the Gibsons continues, according to the Daily Mail, which cited legal analysts who believe the college is playing a waiting game to force the family to take a lesser settlement.
Or maybe the administrators of Oberlin — like so many liberals (think the Clintons, Bidens and others) believe laws and their penalties don’t apply to them. Such things are only for Republicans hit by early morning police raids, Trump associates, public school parents, and dissenting doctors and scientists.
Take, for example, Raimondo, the Oberlin vice president who pushed for the protests and who threatened to have a mob go after a faculty member who disagreed with her methods.
She has left Oberlin. And is now the vice president for student affairs at Oglethorpe College in Atlanta.
