In November 2016, a black Oberlin College student walked into a family-run shop near the Ohio school to buy wine with a fake ID, according to court records.

A white employee, the grandson of an owner, suspected that the student was also trying to steal wine, and chased him outside, placing him in a chokehold, according to some witness accounts included in the records. Two of the students’ friends, who are also black, intervened.

The altercation quickly touched off protests by students outside the shop, Gibson’s Bakery, which has been a fixture in Oberlin, about 40 miles west of Cleveland, for more than 100 years.

[Update: Jury awards Ohio bakery $33 million in punitive damages.]

They accused the shop of being racist, and petitioned the college to cut its ties to the bakery, which was a supplier to its cafeterias. The bakery and two of its owners then sued the college for libel, in November 2017, accusing it of supporting and stoking the students’ claims of racism.