Black Carpenter Wins Discrimination Case Against Disneyland

Sixteen years after Disneyland fired Wheeler L. Kelly--the first black it had ever hired as a carpenter--a U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles has ruled that Kelly was dismissed for “racially discriminatory and retaliatory purposes” and should get his pay, his benefits and his old job back.

Kelly, now 50 and in business for himself as a contractor in Santa Ana, said he wished to return to work at Disneyland “to prove my point--mainly, that I wasn’t wrong to start with” when he was fired for alleged insubordination in March, 1969.

Kelly said that in his three years at Disneyland, as the only black among 400 craftsmen, “I was called ‘nigger,’ ‘jiggaboo,’ ‘Communist,’ ” and, when he complained to supervisors, they ignored him.

Although he now wants to work for the amusement park again --staying long enough to earn a pension--Kelly said he believes, from the long battle over his dismissal, that he will still find discrimination there.

“A black person would have a better chance of being a federal judge or winning a gold medal ice-skating in the Olympics or being an astronaut--than being a carpenter at Disneyland,” Kelly said.

Disneyland officials had little comment on the case Thursday except to say that they believed their record of hiring minorities has been “exemplary” and they were considering an appeal.

Proud of Record

Erwin Okun, vice president of corporate communications for Disneyland’s parent company, Walt Disney Productions in Burbank, said he had not seen the federal court decision and so could not “speak to those facts.” However, he said, speaking for Disneyland and the entire Disney corporation, “We’re very proud of our record in the equal-opportunity area.”

In a 12-page ruling issued Sept. 11, U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall concluded that Kelly had been subjected to racial comments, epithets or jokes from co-workers and supervisors when he worked at Disneyland from Jan. 3, 1966 to March 24, 1969.

Supervisors ignored him or told him to follow the example of Jackie Robinson and remain “bigger than some of the remarks and incidents he encountered,” Marshall wrote. They also refused to give him overtime on the same basis as white workers and assigned him to less desirable work shifts, she wrote.

And, in “a prima facie case of unlawful employment retaliation,” Disneyland officials fired him one month after he had filed a discrimination complaint against Disneyland with the state, Marshall said in her ruling.

Kelly was 33 when he was fired. He had been assigned to repair the huts on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise ride, Kelly recalled Thursday. When his supervisors did not arrive in that area immediately, he and a gardener began to talk about repairing some huts across the river, he said, “and when I looked around, my bosses were standing there as though they were looking for us.” The foreman swore at him, Kelly said, and the next day, he was told he was fired.

State Dismissed Complaint

Kelly’s discrimination complaint filed with the state was eventually dismissed. A related complaint filed with the federal Equal Opportunities Employment Commission was investigated and, in 1979, that agency “found there was probable cause” to believe Disneyland had discriminated against Kelly and other blacks, according to Stuart Herman, one of Kelly’s attorneys.

The federal agency took no formal action but instead suggested that Kelly undertake his own law suit, which the contractor did in 1980. A nine-day trial was held in February and March of this year, Herman said.

Although Kelly has been granted monetary relief, the precise amount of damages--estimated at more than $100,000--will have to be settled with Disney attorneys in the next few weeks, Herman said.

Herman said he could not comment on Disneyland’s hiring practices now. But the attorney said records submitted to the federal court in March indicated that Kelly had been the only black hired as a Disneyland carpenter since the amusement park opened in 1955.

His client would like to return to work at Disneyland, Herman said, because “Wheeler Kelly would like the opportunity to show Disneyland . . . that blacks can do carpentry work.”

Disney officials said Thursday that “as a matter of company policy,” they could not make public any figures on minority employment at the park, including their record of employing blacks as carpenters.

Still, Disney spokesman Okun said, “Disney was doing a fine job at increasing minority employment.” Sam Williams, a prominent black attorney, sits on the board of directors of the parent corporation, and the firm signed an agreement in 1983 with the NAACP setting goals for working with minorities in banking, advertising and purchasing.