Camille Cosby’s Comparison of Husband’s Conviction to Slavery, Emmitt Till Draws Criticism

By AFRO Staff

Camille Cosby, wife of famed comedian Bill Cosby who was recently convicted in a Pennsylvania court with the drugging and raping of plaintiff Andrea Constandt, is now in the public crosshairs after a spirited defense of her husband in which she compared his conviction to the horrors of slavery and lynching.

In her three-page public statement, Camille Cosby begins by comparing her husband’s treatment during his legal battles to that of a slave with no rights.

“‘We the people’ are the first three words of our nation’s Constitution, but who were those people in 1787? Dr. Howard Zinn, the renowned, honest historian, states in his bestselling book, A People’s History of the United States:  ‘The majority of the 55 men who framed the Constitution were men of wealth in land, slaves, manufacturing or shipping.’ Clearly, most people were not included in that original draft of the Constitution; no women, Native Americans, poor white men; and, absolutely, no enslaved Africans,” she wrote.

“Now enters an American citizen, Bill Cosby,” she continues. “The overall media, with their frenzied, relentless demonization of him and unquestioning acceptance of accusers’ allegations without any attendant proof, have superseded the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee due process and equal protection, and thereby eliminated the possibility of a fair trial and unbiased jury. Bill Cosby was labelled as guilty because the media and accusers said so… period.”

Mrs. Cosby goes on to compare the public outcry against her husband to that of a “lynch mob,” and suggests his conviction was comparable to the case of Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old Black teen who was tortured and killed when a White woman falsely accused him of sexual harassment.

The 74-year-old’s public defense of her husband is being dragged on social media.

“Camille Cosby takes ‘stand by your man’ down to a blind disgusting level. She should go to jail right along with Cosby,” one user wrote.

“A woman is normally not responsible for what her husband does but I think Camille Cosby deserves every bit of criticism she’s getting…definitely an exception to the rule,” Twitter user Yashad Ali said in his post.

Another Twitter user compares Camille Cosby to “Dr. Frankenstein” and Bill Cosby to the “monster.”

And, CNN commentator and former White House aide Keith Boykin uses Cosby’s own words against him, citing Bill Cosby’s 2004 speech to NAACP: “Camille Cosby might want to hold off on the ‘Black Power’ statement and re-read the words of her husband from his infamous ‘pound cake speech.’ “We cannot blame white people…Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals.’”