Black man details alleged beating at the hands of a white supremacist group in Boston

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October 4, 2024

From the Associated Press

The white supremacist group, The Patriot Front, in Boston in 2022. (Stuart Cahill / MediaNews via Getty Images file)

A Black teacher and musician told a federal court Thursday that members of a white nationalist hate group punched, kicked and beat him with metal shields during a march through downtown Boston two years ago.

Charles Murrell III, of Boston, was in federal court Thursday to testify in his lawsuit asking for an undisclosed amount of money from the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau.

“I thought I was going to die,” Murrell said, according to The Boston Globe.

The newspaper said that U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani last year found the group and Rousseau, of Grapevine, Texas, liable for the attack after Rousseau didn’t respond to a civil lawsuit Murrell filed. Talwani will issue a ruling after the hearing from Murrell and several other witnesses.

Murrell was in the area of the Boston Public Library to play his saxophone on July 2, 2022, when he was surrounded by members of the Patriot Front and assaulted in a “coordinated, brutal, and racially motivated attack,” according to his lawsuit.

NBC has more details.

Discover what the Patriot Front stands for.

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