Dr. Boyce Watkins; Judge Refuses to Allow Kelley Williams-Bolar to Visit Tonya McDowell…

by Staff April 26, 2011 6 Comments Opinion Sista Talk Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) I just spoke with Kelley Williams-Bolar, the mother in Ohio who’d been arrested for sending her child to a school outside her district. Her goal had been to go to Connecticut this week to support Tonya McDowell, the second black mother in months to be prosecuted for the same offense. To our surprise, the judge in Kelley’s case, Patricia Cosgrove, denied Kelley the right to travel across state lines.

I find it interesting that this law-abiding mother, who simply wanted a better life for her children, finds herself forced to go through life with a probation hanging over her head, having her freedom restricted by judges and prosecutors who are determined to perpetuate the nightmare for Kelley and her family.

Kelley’s situation (as well as the fact that they are continuing to persecute her ailing father in Ohio, likely due to the attention her case received) is a reminder of how otherwise productive citizens are having their rights violated by a system that will spend scarce resources to keep them locked up instead of helping them to get access to equality in a broken and racist educational system. I am perplexed by the decision of Judge Cosgrove to keep Kelley trapped in Ohio, for I can’t imagine what illegal activity she thinks Kelley might be engaged in, other than (gasp) helping another black woman protect her family from a system that is determined to destroy them.

Welcome to American Racism 101, where it’s now open season on poor black mothers in America.

Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.

6 Comments

DollyMadison says:

May 11, 2011 at 1:29 am

Kelley Williams-Bolar wanted free after-school care that didn’t inconvenience her father. She could have paid for after-school care at her home so that the kids didn’t have to go home to an empty apartment after school. She could have delayed her schooling so that she could get home in time to meet her kids there. Or she could have asked her Dad to go to her home after school to meet the kids there and await her arrival when she got home from her college classes.

She didn’t do any of those things.

The reason she enrolled her kids in the suburban school district wasn’t to improve their lives. It was in order to give her free after school care.

Now, with Tanya McDowell, it’s unfair for her to be prosecuted since other parents who did the same exact thing aren’t being prosecuted. That’s called selective prosecution, and I can’t imagine that any conviction wouldn’t be overturned on that basis. On the other hand, KWB repeatedly got caught, and repeatedly doubled down. She refused to admit her guilt, and kept up the charade for as long as possible, appealing when it was made clear to her repeatedly that claiming two residences, as she did, was illegitimate. McDowell, on the other hand, immediately removed her child when she was notified by the city – when in fact she could have told them that she occasionally resided in a Norwalk shelter instead of claiming that she lived within another nearby school district’s boundaries!

The two women’s cases aren’t really comparable. It’s too bad that so many people are conflating it, thereby damning McDowell unfairly.

Lots of people under the control of courts can’t travel, especially when they never admit their guilt. That’s the biggest reason that KWB is being treated harshly here – it’s ALL a result of her own behavior – she’s not a victim here.

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DollyMadison says:

May 11, 2011 at 1:18 am

It is really offensive and the defense of someone who doesn’t actually have a legit defense to call the posts by Mark and Rickey “troll posts”. They are far from it. The author here didn’t tell the truth and the whole truth about what happened in Ohio, and they pointed that out.

Kelley Williams-Bolar tried to claim multiple times that there was a racial aspect to them going after her. But when the US Dept of Education’s Civil Rights bureau investigated that claim, they found it to be groundless! Later, after that route failed, she returned a letter claiming that she was in the military and had been deployed, apparently since she learned that the invalid temporary custody agreement where the grandparent had guardianship would only be valid if she were in the military and had been deployed (even then, without the agreement of the children’s father, it wouldn’t have worked, but that was one of the necessary steps). But she wasn’t in the military.

KWB was dishonest. Repeatedly. She claimed, when it suited her, that her children lived with the grandparents. When it suited her, she claimed that they all resided in the subsidized housing. One doesn’t get to claim dual residencies as she did. She left off her child support payments two years, and one of those years she left off her income as a teacher’s aide when applying for reduced-price lunches! She lied about where her kids slept. The most damning evidence of her dishonesty is that she would drive to her dad’s house, rather than directly to the school, so that it would appear that her kids were walking from the grandparents’ home to the bus after spending the night at the grandparents! If she wasn’t trying to deceive people; if she didn’t know that she was being dishonest and stealing schooling her children weren’t legitimately entitled to, she would have simply continued down the same road she took to get to her father’s house in order to get to the two schools that her children attended instead of stopping at his house and waiting on the school bus!

It’s not “troll behavior” to correct errors and omissions to articles and opinion pieces.

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Staff says:

April 28, 2011 at 1:26 pm

It’s all good writechic… Everyone is free to voice their opinion…

Staff,
ThyBlackMan

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writechic says:

April 28, 2011 at 1:24 pm

Hi, thyblackman. I see you have a mean case of trolls (likely the courtesy of the prosecunter’s (oh did I misspell that?) office. I suggest it because these wh*res were all up my website spewing their venemous evil when I did a bit on Ms. Williams-Bolar’s case. I’d say they can rot in hell, but obviously there’s no soul to send.

Best to you.

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Rickey says:

April 28, 2011 at 6:43 am

You call Ms. Williams Bolar a “law-abiding” mother. She deliberately lied to and defrauded multiple government agencies. She is a criminal, as is her father. Furthermore, journalistic examinations revealed that there was no racial discrimination in this case. Copley-Fairlawn Schools investigated plenty of black and white families. What distinguished Williams-Bolar was that she was the only party who refused to cooperate. Lets expend our resources defending true law-abiding citizens worthy of our time.

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Mark says:

April 27, 2011 at 9:24 am

Firstly, you need to properly state the reason she enrolled her children in the Copley-Fairlawn school district. She stated that she did it for the safety of her children, Not for a better education. You are perpetuating a false image of this woman. She also defrauded the Bureau of Job and Family Services by understating her income and child support payments on her free or reduced school lunch program and on her section 8 application at AMHA. She has never acknowledged that what she did was wrong. I do not know what your agenda is for stating incorrect and incomplete information in the matter, you obviously have no journalistic integrity.

Good day to you sir,

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