Viola Plummer: Some years ago there was an incident in upstate New York where the guards in the Orange County Jail house put on Ku Klux Klan outfits and abused two African American and one Latino prisoner. At that time three of our brothers were on trial in Goshen for weapon's possession and we had a judge that was from hell. So when we went to court for our three brothers, the mother of one of the victims in the county jail heard us take on the judge. After that she said to us "you know, these young men were brutalized, etc. and nothing has happened — this was Newburg, New York in 87 — and we need some of your spirit up here. So we began to talk to her about how we take on the county jail apparatus in Orange County. We had a subsequent date for our three brothers [who were on trial] and when we went back we met with this woman Lilly Howard. 

She said that in addition to that [county jail incident], this young woman by the name of Tawana Brawley has been assaulted and raped, alleged by either the Klan or just white rednecks in Goshen, and we should do something about it.