Family problems at an Ohio bakery Appeal for woke college to pay $36M after losing racism libel lawsuit is heartfelt

After losing its defamation action over a shoplifting incident involving three black students at the business in November 2016, Lorna Gibson, the widow of the previous owner of Gibson’s bakery, is demanding that Oberlin College pay the $36 million due.

Following the Ohio Supreme Court’s announcement on Tuesday that it would not hear an appeal on a $25 million verdict against the liberal arts college in Oberlin, southwest of Cleveland, she made some remarks in an opinion piece.

A once-thriving company was wrecked by the debunked claims of racism surrounding the theft incident, according to Lorna Gibson. The workforce has been laid off, the “shelves are barren,” there is hardly any business, and the white family running it is deeply in debt.

‘If I got the money from the college, I wouldn’t buy a house, or go on vacation, or leave Ohio. I would replace the compressors for the refrigerators and replace the fryers and proofers that we use for our dough,’ she wrote.

‘If the money doesn’t come through within the next couple of months, I’ll be forced to declare bankruptcy and shut the doors of Gibson’s for good.’

Family-run After a woke protest, Gibson’s Bakery is battling to survive. The Ohio College promoted a false story of racism, urged the neighborhood to boycott the business, and ended its food deliveries to the restaurant.

Store owners Allyn Gibson and his son David Gibson, both of whom are now dead, sued Oberlin College in November 2017 on the grounds that the college had defamed them and injured their company.

The lawsuit was brought forward a year after the incident in which David Gibson’s son, Allyn, followed and assaulted a black male student whom he believed to have stolen a bottle of wine. He was joined by two black female classmates who stepped in; all three were taken into custody and ultimately entered guilty pleas to minor counts.

The arrests provoked demonstrations outside Gibson’s Bakery where pamphlets accusing the Gibsons of a long history of racial profiling and prejudice were distributed, some by an Oberlin College vice president and dean of students.

“They used their bullhorns to label us racists” The day after Donald Trump’s victory, awakened campus activists showed up to Lorna Gibson’s door, she said in her account of the event. “College officials were there too, passing out leaflets,” wrote Gibson.

They blocked the entrance and yelled at customers as they forced their way to the counter. A couple people came in to film our customers on their phones.

All students received an email with a resolution from the Student Senate denouncing the Gibson family, and it was displayed in a student center for a year.

Oberlin College officials ordered its campus food provider to stop buying cookies, bagels and other items from Gibson’s.

‘Our world was turned upside down and has never been set right,’ Lorna Gibson wrote in the article, in which she strenuously rejects claims her family were ‘white supremacists’ who racially profiled customers.

‘Calling us racists wasn’t just wrong, it was deeply painful to our core.’

The college refused to ‘retract its baseless claims that we were racist’, protests continued, and the store was forced to lay off half its staff and cut opening hours, she added.

The boycott effectively continues to this day and freshmen nowadays are ‘brainwashed to hate us’ she added.

In June 2019, after a five-week trial, jurors awarded the Gibsons $44 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The award was later reduced to $25 million and $6 million in legal fees, but rose again in this week’s state supreme court decision after a series of appeals.

‘I still haven’t seen a penny from the school,’ wrote Lorna Gibson.

‘The college, which has about a billion dollars’ worth of assets at its disposal, still refuses to pay.’

David Gibson died in November 2019 at age 65 after battling pancreatic cancer. Bereaved Lorna Gibson said she wanted to do everything she could ‘to honor his final wish’ and ‘keep the doors open, no matter what’.

Allyn Gibson died in February, aged 93. He spent much of his eighties sitting in front of the bakery, a ‘fixture in the community’ who chatted with locals, wrote Lorna Gibson. After the protests, ‘no one would talk to him. It broke his heart’, she added.

Oberlin College told  DailyMail.com in a statement that it was ‘disappointed’ by this week’s Ohio Supreme Court decision to nix the appeal.

‘The issues raised by this case have been challenging, not only for the parties involved, but for the entire Oberlin community,’ it said.

In online posts, the college does not seek to substantiate the allegations of racism against the Gibsons, but rather distances itself from those claims, saying they were independently made by students, who are entitled to free speech.