Bishop William Barber II, a highly esteemed civil rights leader, was ejected from a screening room at a local AMC movie theater in Greenville, North Carolina. After a viral video showed the national leader being removed, the top executive at the corporate office offered apologies to the bishop and set up a meeting to discuss the regrettable incident.
According to police reports, at approximately 3:20 p.m., an AMC Fire Tower 12 employee contacted the Greenville Police Department with a trespassing complaint. Someone reported a customer inside the movie house arguing with a staff member.
Lt. Justin Wooten confirmed that two officers responded to the call and identified the customer involved as Barber.
The Yale University founding director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy was there with his assistant and elderly mother attempting to view “The Color Purple,” a day after it came out.
A video recorded by someone in the theater captures him seated in his personalized chair within the handicapped section.
Barber has arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis that necessitates he walks with two canes and uses a special chair, a practice he carries even to locations such as Broadway shows and even the White House.
“I said this is my ADA and they questioned me,” Barber said in an interview with WRAL News. “They said, ‘No, that’s a regular chair,’ and I said, ‘No, it’s for me because I can’t sit low. It’s impossible.'”
“Everything I know about ADA law says you’re supposed to make adjustments,” he added.
Upon setting up the chair in the screening room, a staff member informed him that it was not permitted and requested him to move to a regular house chair.
He refused — noting (off camera) that it was his civil right to be accommodated.
When the two officers met with Barber — who retired this past summer after 30 years as the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in nearby Goldsboro, North Carolina — tried to explain his plight as others in the theater started to advocate for him, including someone telling the person recording on their cellphone to “keep filming.”
“See what they do to people? This is Bishop Barber,” someone else says in the footage.
Eventually, the preacher does get up and walks with his canes to the exit. As Barber is walking away, he says in his booming preacher voice, “I want the children to see this because they’re going to deal with it. I’ve fought for everybody in this state,” according to WRAL.com.
It also appears that the preacher is praying as he walks out of the screening room, “God, I ask you to bless them … To move in them … because they know what they’re doing is wrong.”
In the video, he says, “They called an officer of the law, the AMC theater in Greenville, North Carolina. They would not make amends to simply do the right thing. But we’ll deal with it.”
ABC 11 interviewed Katherine MacFarlane, the director of the Disability Law and Policy Program at Syracuse U. College of Law, and she said the AMC violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires that movie theaters have to assess individuals on a case-by-case basis and adapt policy to accommodate such patrons.
AMC Theatre’s corporate office released a statement regarding the incident and apologized for the location not accommodating him.
“We sincerely apologize to Bishop Barber for how he was treated, and for the frustration and inconvenience brought to him, his family, and his guests. We have a number of accommodations in place at our theaters at all times, and our theater teams work hard to accommodate guests who have needs that fall outside the normal course of business,” AMC Theatre’s Vice President of Corporate Communications Ryan Noonan wrote in the statement.
Noonan says the company encourages guests who require special seating to talk to a manager in advance of their visit to the theater to discuss accommodations and said the company will be reviewing its policies with local theater teams as a way to discourage something like this from happening again.
AMC’s Chairman and CEO, Adam Aron, reached out to Bishop William Barber, to set up plans for a face-to-face meeting in the upcoming week “to discuss both this situation.” He also plans to talk about Barber’s history of “good works” throughout his 45-year career in social justice.
While Barber has agreed to meet with Aron, he said there is a message he wants to be conveyed to the public.
“This is just about how we treat, how we say to disabled folk, ‘There’s no room for you here if you don’t come a certain way,'” the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign said. He also announced he is hosting a press conference to address those needs.
