“Why did you steal my seat, thief ?…Of course it would be you who stole our seats.”
Standing inside the esteemed theatre house, Lyric Baltimore, the insults landed on Veronica Dunlap with a sting.
The civil rights attorney of 15 years was looking for an afternoon of culture with her son, Massawa El. Instead, Dunlap says she was embarrassed in front of hundreds of Lyric Baltimore patrons on Mother’s Day, labeled “aggressive” and asked to leave the premises after a white family accused her and her son of stealing their seats.
Now, what started as a simple misunderstanding has escalated into a formal complaint with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights and a petition to remove Thomas Bailey, Lyric Baltimore’s CEO and general manager…