Dying on the Vine? Balch and Alleged Racism
It’s killing them.
Will Balch & Bingham vehemently deny the actions in North Birmingham, an area that is 92.5 percent African-American, are racist?
Will Balch & Bingham vehemently deny the actions by former Balch partner and convicted felon Joel I. Gilbert and his paid stooges targeting poor black children and a school that is 95 percent minority were racist?
Will Balch & Bingham rather die on the vine than acknowledge, apologize, and advance beyond the ugliest chapter of their almost 100-year history?
With the new foolish LMAO campaign to try to justify Gilbert’s criminal conduct and the targeting of poor black children in North Birmingham, we start with a Monday morning reminder and review that Balch appears to have an unsavory history when it comes to African-Americans.
Let’s first look at Balch & Bingham partner Clark A. Cooper who allegedly spearheaded the Newsome Conspiracy Case and was fired in March of 2017 and is now selling mattresses.
Cooper was sued in 2013 by the Alabama State Attorney General in his role as a board member of an Alabama educational scholarship trust for wrongly limiting scholarship recipients to only a small number of universities, including only 1 of the 12 historically black universities in Alabama. Cooper resigned from the board the day after the suit was filed. The trust was established for first-ever family members to attend a university.
In Vincent, Alabama, Balch & Bingham partner Robert Fowler represented a quarry company that allegedly bought out white land-owners but kept the African-American community out in the cold.
According to a news report from 2013:
There is an underlying racial issue at play in the River Loop [in Vincent]. According to the residents who live within a stone’s throw of the proposed limestone quarry, no offer was made on a single black-owned property in the area. As for the white property owners in the area who sold to the quarry, their land sold quickly and quietly for highly inflated rates.
Wanda Threatt is a resident who lives in the River Loop. She claims that the racial discrimination by the quarry company has left her community isolated and without any property value to sell their homes. “White Rock bought land bordered by blacks, but never from them. White Rock bought land bordered by Evangel Temple, but left the black-owned church untouched and devalued. The economic worth of white sellers increased. They moved away. The economic worth of blacks decreased, leaving us trapped by inequities. Our land is devalued — unsaleable. We face exposure to hazardous waste, air, water, noise and vibration pollution,” Threatt said in a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The quarry company denied the accusations on their own website, but the stench of racism, discrimination remains.
In February, we took convicted felon and Balch-made millionaire Gilbert to task for drafting what appears to be a letter of intimidation to a public charity in 2014 that demanded a list of their financial supporters.
The hardball tactic reminded us of the unsavory tactics of segregationists and racists in the 1960s who would demand lists of financial supporters of Civil Rights organizations. Public charities are protected from these tactics.
Interestingly, during the Gilbert trial we couldn’t find billing records for the ominous letter.
Balch appears to be hemorrhaging internally and externally not only by the criminal conviction, but the blind arrogance and impunity that continues to warp Balch.
Balch should confront and resolve these issues or they may simply wither and die on the vine.
