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- MONTICELLO - The Village of Monticello Human Rights Commission (HRC) joined hands with the Sullivan County chapter of the National Association for Colored People (NAACP) in denouncing a newsletter entitled The Epitaph: Newspaper for a Dying County.
- The sheet was reportedly circulated in early June at several Monticello businesses. Only one person has been named as its suspected originator.
- At a July 12 meeting, the HRC unanimously voted to refer the matter to the NYS Division on Human Rights for investigation and any other appropriate action.
- No one has admitted authoring or circulating the two-page newsletter which targeted a local couple with ethnic insults.
- The Monticello residents objected to personal attacks launched against them in the publication, which ridiculed them as a "Gringo" and "Latina" couple and scorned one with an allegation she was "made famous by the tune 'I Am A Naturalized Woman.'"
- In a July 5 letter, Tommie Tolliver, chair of the NAACP legal redress committee, said the committee had reviewed The Epitaph and agreed that it was racist hate literature.
- While its origins remain unclear, Thompson supervisor Anthony Cellini provided a clue. Cellini said he was given a copy by liquor store owner Paul Pashkow, who told him it came from lawyer Mark Schulman, 46, of Wurtsboro. "The day he gave it to me I said 'Where'd you get this?' He said `Mark Schulman gave it to me,'" Cellini stated.
- Pashkow did not deny saying this, but would not repeat it.
- Given numerous opportunities, Schulman has repeatedly refused to comment on his alleged role in with The Epitaph.
- When the complaint was filed, Schulman responded by attacking the HRC in a June 29 letter to acting village manager and Conservative party chairperson George Panchyshyn, claiming that because commissioners never signed an oath book the commission is vacant. Schulman himself was village attorney when the oaths should have been given, back in August 1993.
- Similar to The Epitaph -- though evidently penned by someone with less schooling -- was a letter to mayor Robert Friedland attacking the Jewish people as "Christ killers" and "evil."
- The handwritten letter -- signed by Waddell and Evelyn Davis, with a Monticello post office box -- is undated and is peppered with Bible quotations. Neither could be reached.
- Deputy mayor Michael Levinson said a copy arrived recently in his mailbox at village hall. Friedland said he gets such letters in the mail from Mr. Davis, 53, about every six months, as did to former mayor John Diuguid. Friedland and Diuguid are both Jewish.
- Friedland and his wife Betty asked the HRC on July 12 to do anything in their power to discourage the continuation of such racist communications as the letter and The Epitaph.
Related external links
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- Village of Monticello Human Rights Commission
- The sheet was reportedly circulated in early June at several Monticello businesses. Only one person has been named as its suspected originator.
Thursday, July 20, 1995.
Human Rights Commission and NAACP join in denouncing racist literature