The bartender said that he was drinking a beer post-shift when someone came in and said a Black man — the person used the n-word — had been knocked out. The staffer, Ian Graham, immediately knew who the victim was, he said later. “We only have one colored in our town,” he testified, according to court documents. Graham recalled heading outside to find the African American man now conscious but spitting out blood, sprawled out in the street in the tiny Michigan village called Wolverine. He heard that a White patron — a man with a “reputation for being racist” — had hit the victim after hurling a racial slur. He told the court he then watched as that patron emerged from the bar to punch the Black customer three more times, knocking the man to the ground over several minutes. Edward James Tyson, 38, did not hit back, he said. He just kept asking a question: “Why are you calling me that?” That’s when Graham said “things were getting out of hand,” according to a court summary of testimony. Whether anyone told the White customer to leave is disputed. But no one at the B.S. & Co bar called the police. At first, a court said Tyson could not sue the bar for negligence that Saturday night in 2015. But this week the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled otherwise, clearing the way for Tyson to seek damages after he says he suffered a traumatic brain injury. The fact that Tyson was beaten just outside the front door does not relieve the bar staff of any duty to intervene, the appeals court said. (…) “It was so obvious that a horrible, despicable act of racial violence was unfolding right in front of them,” he said. “And it was obvious that unless somebody did something this was gonna end badly.” Darnella Frazier, teen who filmed Floyd’s arrest, celebrates Chauvin’s guilty verdict The White customer, 68-year-old David Dawkins, is also named in the lawsuit and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, according to court records. The Washington Post could not reach Dawkins Friday, and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. The owner of the bar, Carol Unthank, declined to comment Friday, and The Post could not reach Graham.
via washingtn post: A Black customer was beaten right outside a bar and no one called police. He can sue, a court says.