Cook Case Archives

The Cook Class Update

  The Cook Class Action Steering Committee has established The Howard Cook and Tommy Shaw Foundation for Black Employees at the Library, Inc. with the unclaimed funds consisting of court-ordered payments to members of the Cook class, who alleged racial discrimination in a successful lawsuit filed against the Library of Congress in 1982.
  Under terms of a settlement agreement approved by U.S. District Court Judge Norma Holloway Johnson in 1995, the committee decided how $8.5 million in back pay should be allocated to class members. Howard Cook, who brought the original action, said the committee has been unable to locate some of the class members eligible for payments.
  Cook said Judge Johnson¸ in a March 30, 1999, memorandum of opinion, authorized establishment of a foundation from which the Cook Class Action Steering Committee could distribute funds to class claimants as they are located.
  According to Cook, the court also authorized the committee to use interest generated by the foundation principal--or enhanced by foundation fundraising –to pay for the education and training of African-American employees seeking to advance their careers at the Library and to assist employees pursuing discrimination claims against the Library. She gave instructions governing foundation operations in a May 25, 1999, memo.
The committee filed articles of incorporation for the foundation as a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization with the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs on September 26, 2001. Cook said Judge Johnson approved the foundation's by-laws, which spell out the foundation's mission and permit spending.
  Cook said the committee will engage in fundraising activities to benefit the foundation this spring. The organization, on December 3, 2002, requested Library recognition as an employee organization.
  The Howard Cook and Tommy Shaw Foundation for Black Employees at the Library, Inc., was dedicated on November 3, 2002, in a service at the Florida Avenue Baptist Church in northwest Washington, D.C.

Leon Turner

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