Last year, a mural went up in Boynton Beach, Florida celebrating heroic local firefighters. One of the women depicted was Latosha Clemons, 48, the first Black female firefighter in Boynton Beach who served as deputy fire chief until her retirement in mid-2020. Let’s just put aside that “first Black female” anything in 2020 is pretty egregious on its own, because it gets far worse. Clemons was outraged when she saw the portrait of herself because — wait for it — she was painted with a white face. Clemons is suing the city for defamation and negligence, Insider reported, and they are voting next week on a proposed $80,000 settlement.
The mural was unveiled on Clemons’s old fire station on June 3, 2020. It showed both Clemons and Glenn Joseph, a Black retired fire chief, as white, according to Insider. The mural was removed the next day and two local officials were fired over the controversy. But, the city claimed, the literal whitewashing of these prominent Black heroes had nothing to do with race. Of course not.
