The former city manager of Hopewell, Virginia, has filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit and is demanding her job back after accusing white city council members of racism and wrongful termination.
Concetta Manker made history in 2023 when she became the city’s first woman and first Black city manager.
“Two years later, however, the City made a different kind of history — a historical act of illegal and unlawful behavior,” according to a federal lawsuit Manker filed against the city and four white council members. “On May 1, 2025, using maneuvers that were blatantly illegal under the governing procedural rules, the City, through its white councilors, unlawfully terminated Dr. Manker as the City Manager and did so based on her race. Indeed, the 4-to-3 termination vote fell strictly along racial lines.”
Manker is suing for $6.85 million “over deliberate acts of racial discrimination and conflicts of interest by the White majority on council,” according to The Progress-Index.
The five-count lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Richmond. It names Councillors Ronnie Ellis and Susan Daye, and Mayor Johnny Partin Jr. and Vice Mayor Rita Joyner. The suit accuses them of violation of “liberty interests,” defamation and conflict of interest in terminating Manker on May 1. It also contends Manker was denied due process in challenging her firing.
Manker, who has a doctorate in applied management and decision sciences, is demanding immediate reinstatement on the grounds that the council violated Robert’s Rules of Order, which govern the council’s actions.
The city council initially tried to terminate Manker during a meeting in February “without cause,” according to her attorney Richard Hawkins.
Hawkins pointed to a section of Roberts Rules of Order, which “governs the Council’s actions,” and “must be moved either on the same day the original vote was taken or on the next succeeding day within the same session on which a business meeting is held,” he said in a letter reported on by WRIC-TV.
Since Manker wasn’t technically fired until May 1, there was a nearly three-month gap, which violates Robert’s Rules of Order, Hawkins said.
“No such reconsideration motions, however, were made at either of those times,” said Hawkins, referencing the Feb. 12 council meeting when a vote to fire Manker failed in a 3-3 tie, and another meeting on Feb. 19.
“Instead, the motion was made almost three months later. This delay nullifies the May 1 motion on its face, and it renders the Council’s subsequent termination vote wholly invalid.”
The council fired Manker after a 4-3 council vote along racial lines on May 1, which Manker called “racially motivated.”
Manker contends she’s had a positive impact on the city, but that its four white councilors moved to terminate her employment because of her race, and one of them allegedly said she was “Blacking up” Hopewell during her tenure, according to WRIC-TV.
Manker is separately suing Joyner for defamation over an email she reportedly sent to a constituent in August 2024, WRIC reported. In that email, she described Manker as “incompetent” and claimed she “thwarted [Joyner] at every twist and turn.”
“Joyner’s criticism did not come from a place of good faith,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, it was part and parcel of her stated beliefs that Dr. Manker did not ‘look like’ a City Manager and ‘we do not want someone like her’ running our City, statements that were interpreted by the listener as racist in nature.”
The lawsuit also describes an interaction Black City Councilor Dominic Holloway said he had with Joyner. Holloway accused Joyner in that conversation of saying Manker was “Blacking up” the city of Hopewell by hiring Black employees.
Manker’s attorney, Hawkins, in the previously mentioned letter, called the May 1 vote “an obviously improper motion” and “the kind of abusive circumstance that the timeliness requirement is required to protect.”
And other Hopewell residents agreed.
“I’ll tell you right now, y’all are the four most disgusting individuals in this city, and you all need to step down from your positions,” one man said after the council vote, WWBT-TV reported. He was referring to the white council members who all voted to terminate Manker. The outburst was met with resounding applause and standing ovations as council members looked on.
Police also escorted people out of the emotional meeting. The council upset some people when it rejected a request by another councilmember to put forth a motion to allow the community to voice its opinion on Manker’s future.
Hawkins also said one of the council members, City Battalion Chief Ronnie Ellis, did not have “legal standing to make the motion” to fire Manker.
Not only did Ellis not cast a vote in February, but his vote in May is considered a conflict of interest because he serves as both a city councilor and a Hopewell fire battalion chief. At one point he was both Manker’s superior and her subordinate, respectively. Manker contends in her lawsuit that he should have recused himself from the vote.
She is also accusing Ellis of using a racist dog whistle. A dog whistle is like a secret code that doesn’t seem racist but has another meaning, in his campaign for Hopewell City Council, in which he allegedly targeted Manker.
In an interview in 2023 before Namker was appointed city manager, Ellis said Hopewell shouldn’t “micromanage” its city managers and instead “allow [them] to run the city and oversee city staff,” WRIC reported.
“On the other hand, for the 2024 election, when Dr. Manker was serving as the full-time City Manager for the City, Ellis made no such ‘hands off’ remarks about the City Manager,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, he distributed a campaign flyer that contained the racist dog-whistle phrase ‘we need to take our city back.’”
Hopewell’s city attorney, Anthony Bessette, warned the council not to vote on terminating Manker on May 1, but they ignored the advice.
“While the Council majority’s use of tortured procedural gymnastics to terminate Dr. Manker was by itself illegal, it also revealed the true motive for the vote: racism,” according to the lawsuit.
“The 4-3 vote along racial lines was no accident. It was the direct result of racial enmity against Dr. Manker that had been brewing since the very beginning of her tenure (and even before), and it was the inevitable outcome given the racist attitudes of one or more of the white members of the Council majority.”
Neither Hawkins nor Manker is saying anything more about the case at this time. Bessette told The Progress-Index that the city is aware of the lawsuit but that no one has been officially served.
“The city will respond in due course,” Bessette said.
Before she was officially hired as the city’s manager in 2023, Manker served a year as interim manager.
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