Alabama A&M's "cease and desist" lawyer has a family history of furthering George Wallace's legacy by helping ensure the state's HBCUs are underfunded

George Wallace: The Guv'nah who helped cheat Alabama A&M

An attorney who has sent "cease and desist" letters on behalf of Alabama A&M -- an apparent effort to effectively gag journalists who have reported on various scandals swirling at the university's Huntsville campus -- has a family history of opposing equitable funding for Alabama's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), according to a post today at donaldwatkins.com.

Perhaps the actions of Thomas W. Thagard III should be no surprise, given that his father Thomas W. Thagard Jr. (deceased) worked for Birmingham's Balch & Bingham law firm, which had ties to Gov. George Wallace -- who was infamous for his antipathy toward Blacks -- and his ties to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), via a Wallace-related highway-funding scandal.

Essentially, Thagard III is trying to further the legacy of George Wallace, a politico who never was known to hide his racist inclinations. Alabama A&M once had presidents who fought to get equitable funding, both for the Huntsville campus and its sister HBCU -- Alabama State University in Montgomery. But A&M now is content to be represented by a law firm, MaynardNexsen, that borrows from the George Wallace playbook?

That is a sign of the pitiful "leadership A&M now is experiencing under President Daniel K. Wims. To add a touch of irony to the situation, a Watkins post this week showed that George Wallace played a significant role in the chronic underfunding that led the U.S. Departments of Education and Agriculture to conclude that the state of Alabama owes A&M more than $527 million due to it being short-changed on state funding over roughly a 30-year period. Current Gov. Kay Ivey, a White MAGA Republican, claims the state does not owe the money, and the Wims administration has made no attempt to collect it.

What about Thomas W. Thagard III and his family's history of fighting efforts to obtain equitable funding for Alabama's HBCUs? Donald Watkins provides perspective on that question under  the headline "The Father of Alabama A&M University’s “Cease and Desist” Lawyer Waged a Long and Vicious Fight Against Equitable Funding for the University":

On December 20, 2023, Thomas W. Thagard, III, sent a “Cease and Desist” letter to independent journalists Roger Alan Shuler and me. The letter threatened us with a bogus defamation lawsuit over recent articles we published on the growing scandal surrounding Alabama A&M University’s refusal to publicly acknowledge and demand payment of a $527,280,064 debt owed to the university by the state of Alabama.

Thomas W. Thagard, III, is the son of Thomas W. Thagard, Jr. (deceased), a former Balch & Bingham attorney who represented Auburn University in the long-running Knight v. Alabama higher education desegregation case that I filed for the original plaintiffs in 1981. 

Thomas W. Thagard, Jr.’s name appears in the "Attorneys and Parties" section at the beginning of the landmark 1991 and 1995 published opinions in the Knight v. Alabama case. Read it for yourself.

Auburn University, which benefited financially from more than a hundred years of funding discrimination against Alabama A&M, fought “tooth and nail” against court-ordered equitable funding for Alabama A&M.

Thomas W. Thagard, Jr., who was a brilliant lawyer and the son of Judge Thomas Werth Thagard, also succeeded in getting former U.S. District Court Judge U.W. Clemon, who is Black, booted from presiding over the case after Clemon issued his 1991 court opinion in favor of the plaintiffs in the case.

Today, Alabama A&M President Daniel Wims has aligned himself with Thomas W. Thagard, III, and weaponized Thagard to threaten journalists who criticized Wims' failure to claim and collect the $527,280,064 debt that rightfully belongs to Alabama A&M.

What kind of picture does this present for those who care deeply about, and support, Alabama A&M? It is not a pretty picture, Watkins says:

The optics of this new cozy Wims-Thagard bedfellows arrangement are horrible for Alabama A&M, given Thomas W. Thagard, Jr.'s long, ugly, and adversarial history with Alabama A&M. This is the kind of misguided move we would expect from a certified and compromised "Uncle Tom" like Clarence Thomas.

Daniel K. Wims is a proven "sellout" to Bulldog Nation who has masqueraded as Alabama A&M president since January 2022. University trustees, who should be closely supervising Wims, are merely ceremonial pawns in his harmful game of "buck-dancing."

As for me, I am okay with fighting two generations of Thomas W. Thagards to secure the equitable funding that is due and owing to Alabama A&M, including the $527,280,064 that President Wims is afraid to collect.  I am accustomed to waging long, hard, aggressive, fights to enforce our civil and constitutional rights.

I have been fighting for equitable funding for Alabama A&M University since 1973.  I don’t care if the threat to Alabama A&M's equitable funding is perpetrated by a White or Black adversary, or it comes from inside or outside of the university, or it involves a first- or second-generation legal gunslinger.

Now you understand why our adversaries in Alabama do not want us to know our history. They want us clueless, compromised, and weak, like Daniel K. Wims and his current board of university trustees.