Brian K. Mitchell's discovery of altered Army medical records led to military honors for a man slain in the 1919 Elaine Massacre.
Mitchell, a history professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, now says in a lawsuit that he's experienced harassment and retaliation after speaking out about his low pay compared with others in his academic department.
His lawsuit, filed last month in Pulaski County Circuit Court, states that "as the only Black professor in the History Department, Dr. Mitchell has experienced a nearly continuous pattern of discriminatory interference with achieving access to fair terms, conditions, and opportunities for advancement while a full-time professor at UALR."
Mitchell's suit claims that he's been discriminated against because of his race and age.
"UALR has a very public face in regards to diversity and having a diverse faculty. And then it has what's happening privately," Mitchell said in a phone interview. "What they don't say is we've lost a tremendous amount of our faculty of color over issues like this. There are a number of people who have resigned or quit and not gotten tenure and left over these exact issues."
Out of 394 total faculty members in 2019 at UALR, about 6%, or 25, were Black, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Among the 222 tenured faculty, about 5%, or 10, were Black, according to the most recent federal data available.
Jeff Harmon, a spokesman for UALR, said the university is aware of Mitchell's lawsuit and reviewing it. He declined further comment.
Mitchell this spring was granted tenure, defined by the UA System as the right of continuous appointment. Professors gain tenure based on their job performances over several years. After getting tenure, professors still undergo annual reviews.
HAND "FORCED"
But Mitchell's lawsuit also lays out claims of "continued efforts to disqualify his scholarly accomplishments from consideration for tenure." A review of 2016-19 evaluation scores for Mitchell shows his "departmental evaluation rank is inequitably low," which "permanently affects his terms of employment, as these scores are considered cumulatively."
Amy Lafont, the attorney representing Mitchell, 53, said that before filing the lawsuit he followed the university's grievance process, but nothing was done to address his mistreatment. The university did raise Mitchell's salary "to the department floor," the lawsuit states.
Mitchell is set to make $54,821 in annual salary as a tenured associate professor of history, according to a UALR spokesman.
"His hand was really forced. He cares a lot about UALR and the students and his colleagues and the community, so it's not a position he wants to be in," Lafont said. "But it's a position that he feels he has to be in to protect his rights and his wellbeing and his career."
The 46-page court filing states that Mitchell was hired in 2015 as a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor of history after teaching as an adjunct professor at UALR from 2006-15.
"That was the thing I always wanted to do my entire life," Mitchell said by phone, describing his initial hire to a tenure-track position as "a big day."
Mitchell co-wrote a 2020 edition of "Blood in Their Eyes," a historical account of the Elaine Massacre. The bloodshed is described in the Central Arkansas Library System Encyclopedia of Arkansas as "by far the deadliest racial confrontation" in state history. Some details remain unclear, but historians agree that white mobs killed Black residents.
UALR on its website in 2020 described Mitchell as having "developed a reputation for his ability to uncover information about the Elaine Massacre and other injustices in history." He's also given public presentations and contributed to public exhibits about the Elaine Massacre.
Mitchell's research led to a Purple Heart being awarded to the family of Leroy Johnston, a World War I veteran killed in the Elaine Massacre, as he worked with U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., so that Johnston's family received the honors and for a systematic review of contributions made by other Black and minority soldiers from that era.
His graphic novel, "Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana," won a Phillis Wheatley Book Award from the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage, a nonprofit organization devoted to those who can trace their ancestry to those enslaved in the U.S. and to educating the public about slavery.
"Despite this excellence in his job performance, and the prestige, good will, and grant resources he brings to UALR, Dr. Mitchell is not evaluated, rewarded, recognized, or promoted to positions with titles, duties, and compensation reflective of his actual work product," the lawsuit states.
PAY CLAIMS
Mitchell had worked earlier as a senior investigator with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and also as a planner for Metroplan, a Central Arkansas organization that helps local governments study transportation and other projects.
Mitchell said he agreed to take pay lower than his compensation in private sector jobs, but his lawsuit lays out claims of inequitable pay.
The suit states that Mitchell was hired "at a non-negotiated salary of approximately 10% less than a substantially less experienced professor under age 40 who was hired at the same time," and that the next year two other professors under 40 were hired "with higher salaries and other financial and professional incentives that were never offered to Dr. Mitchell."
The court filing states that Mitchell in 2017 learned of "serious pay discrepancies" and "was told by his colleagues that it was related to his race." The colleagues are not named.
At one point, Mitchell was told he would be issued "a one-time back-pay check," but in spring 2018, a clerk in UALR's payroll office told him "that it had been cancelled without explanation," the lawsuit states.
"Dr. Mitchell respectfully expressed bewilderment, and asked for the payroll clerk to contact the Provost's office and ask what had happened. At that moment, an older white male administrator came out from a rear office into the reception area, and in a loud, hostile, unyielding voice, told Dr. Mitchell to leave immediately or the police would be called on him," the lawsuit states.
"He said, 'Leave or I will call 911 right now!' He did not allow Dr. Mitchell to respond or discuss the problem. For a few minutes, the man yelled over Dr. Mitchell's pleas to call the provost until Dr. Mitchell left the office, deeply shaken," the court filing states.
That same day, after contacting UALR's provost's office, Mitchell was able to return to get a check "without incident," the lawsuit states. The check was for approximately $4,500, according to the lawsuit, an "arbitrary" amount.
But the "unwelcome, offensive experience was sufficiently severe in its hostility" that Mitchell was "effectively intimidated," the lawsuit states, and he did not persist in asking UALR to address inequities "until 2019, when his workplace hostility and interference escalated, and intolerably impacted and further threatened the terms and conditions of his employment."
"You feel set up," Mitchell said, describing the check incident.
RETALIATION CLAIM
The lawsuit describes how he "unexpectedly received an unfavorable evaluation," and that it "appeared that many of his accomplishments were not included in the scoring calculations."
Mitchell filed a formal complaint with the university's human resources department. Later in 2019, a UALR hearing committee dismissed his complaint, the lawsuit states. The lawsuit claims that the university failed to properly retain relevant employment records, including score sheets used for Mitchell's 2019 evaluation.
In 2019, Mitchell filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The commission reviews complaints and, upon closing its investigations, issues a Notice of Right to Sue to the person making the complaint, according to its website. This happened with Mitchell's complaint in April of this year, the lawsuit states.
The court document describes efforts by Mitchell to get the university to address concerns about his treatment, stating that UALR officials "abused the internal discrimination complaint process," including "a sham hearing process that treated him as a person accused of misconduct."
The lawsuit asks for "compensatory damages against UALR for its acts of race discrimination, age discrimination, national origin discrimination, and retaliation," including back pay and other damages.
"I would like the retaliation to stop," Mitchell said. The lawsuit details a dispute between Mitchell and the university's Institutional Review Board, a body whose purview is research involving human participants.
He said that after a privacy complaint filed against him related to the transcription of juvenile detention facility records, "all my research has to be approved by someone who isn't even a historian."
The lawsuit describes the records transcribed as "a ledger of names of residents a juvenile detention facility for Black boys that included entries from the 1950s through 1978."
Court documents state the UALR board "found an 'incident of serious noncompliance' of IRB procedures" because Mitchell did not seek a review of his research project, but the lawsuit claims that those involved "abused the power of the IRB office to racially target and improperly discipline Mitchell."
The lawsuit names as defendants UALR Chancellor Christina Drale; former UALR provost Velmer Burton; Sarah Beth Estes, dean of UALR's College of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, and Education; History Department Chair Jess Porter; Belinda Blevins-Knabe, a psychology professor and director of a UALR Institutional Review Board; Krista Lewis, described in the lawsuit as a UALR senior administrator who served as chair of a grievance committee; the university's Institutional Review Board; and trustees.