Descendants of a University of Richmond donor are continuing to demand $3.6 billion in restitution from the institution for stripping their ancestor’s name from its law school.
And they have launched a website to fight the university’s “woke” ideology.
Last year, the institution removed the Williams name from its law school, citing student complaints that he owned slaves more than 175 years ago.
Robert Smith, who graduated from the law school that formerly bore his great-great-grandfather’s name, told The Epoch Times the website exposes the hypocrisy of the university’s focus on gender and sex, instead of education.
Under the banner of “Fighting Against a Captured Institution,” the website details the university’s decision to remove the name of their Civil War-era ancestor.
The website reports on the university’s “woke” activities with articles and videos detailing events such as Pleasurefest and required reading such as “Conjuring the Sex Positive: Witches, Sluts, Feminists.”
Pleasurefest, according to a flier shown on the site, was an event series “that builds sex positivity, increases tools for pleasure in a variety of forms, and promotes healing on campus through radical self and community care.”
The week-long festival in March included a presentation such as “Sex-Ed a Go Go with Dirty Lola.”
“I think we owe it to ourselves to expose the lunacy to what’s going on at college campuses,” Smith said.
According to the URWoke website, the university would not exist but for the generosity of the Williams family.
“This site exposes the university’s lack of gratitude, its ignorance, and cowardice to confront radical cancel culture on its campus,” according to the site.
The fight over the law school name began during the 2021–22 school year.
The notice details the history of T.C. Williams Sr., born in 1831, who operated tobacco businesses in Richmond and elsewhere in Virginia, including Patterson & Williams and Thomas C. Williams & Co.
The university cited records from the 1860 U.S. Federal Census Slave Schedule, which shows 35 enslaved men and boys under the name of Patterson & Williams in the Richmond area.
The notice said personal property tax records show Williams’s businesses were taxed on 25 to 40 slaves. A newspaper account placed by Thomas C. Williams & Co. advertised a reward for the return of two company slaves, Todd and Alex, who escaped a Danville-area farm.
Williams attended the university, then named Richmond College, from 1846 to 1849. According to the notice, he served as a college trustee from 1881 until he died in 1889, and became a university benefactor.
In 1890, the Williams family made a memorial gift of $25,000 to the university, creating an endowment that established a strong foundation for the law program’s development, the university statement reads.
Several of Williams’s children—one of whom succeeded him on the school’s board of trustees and remained until 1929—also supported the university and the law school.
And in 1920, when Richmond College was rechartered as the University of Richmond, the law school began consistently using the name T.C. Williams School of Law, according to the notice.
Smith said his family had given extensively to causes in Richmond and the university for almost 200 years. He said the good his family has done is ignored by those who want to virtue signal.
Jesse Williams, the father of T.C. Williams, donated building materials to the First Baptist Church, Smith said.
Smith wrote in his January letter that the family patriarch also donated masonry and other materials for the neighboring First African Baptist Church.
Jesse Williams also contributed to the building needs of the University of Richmond when its campus was started, he added.
The Williams family contends the university ignores the mores of a time when slavery was common.
Smith told The Epoch Times in February that if the family name is no longer good enough for the university, neither are the family’s financial contributions.
The Williams family said the University of Richmond should give back donations their ancestors made throughout the years, with interest, in the amount of $3.6 billion.
Since then, Smith said the family discovered at least another $20 million in Williams family trust funds that were earmarked for specific uses.
Smith—founder of the legal and financial firm Chartwell Capital Advisors in Richmond, Virginia—said the university has yet to respond to his demands for a refund or his request for information on the trust money.
He said legal action remains on the table.
As Baptists, the financial gifts from the Williams family were meant to further Judeo-Christian values Smith feels the university no longer supports.
Smith said neo-Marxists have taken over the university, and parents might start questioning paying $81,000 per year in tuition at a campus fixated on far-left ideology.
Many universities either renamed or removed statues of historical figures after the death of George Floyd in 2020.
Protest groups nationwide demanded racial justice and called for the removal of historical statues of priests, Christopher Columbus, and even Abraham Lincoln.
Critics contend that removing statues is part of a Marxist-based cultural revolution that seeks to portray the United States as a systemically racist country founded on slavery.
So far, public response to the Williams family stance has been positive, Smith said.
Since the story began circulating, he said people have applauded him for standing up. Smith said that supportive emails from as far away as England, Italy, and Africa have landed in his inbox, adding only a few have been negative.
“It’s been overwhelming. I get emails from all over the world,” he said.
The University of Richmond has not responded to requests for comment.
