Blacks Complain of Slurs, Segregation, Menial Jobs : 2 Race Bias Suits Recall Bad Old Days of South

A drama is unfolding in this military town that reads like the script of a bad movie about life in the South two generations ago.

The plot has blacks being forced into hard labor at low wages with no chance of advancement under a system that separates them and requires that they shuffle and grin while the white boss makes racist jokes.

One man summons the courage to buck the system but is fired for his trouble. A federal lawyer dashes to the rescue and steers the case toward the courts.

The script--we are told--is based on a true story. But it is alleged to have happened not 10 or 20 years ago, but now. The setting is a Pepsi Cola distribution franchise in Jacksonville, 30 miles down the highway from New Bern, where the soft drink was invented by a pharmacist in 1898.

Ex-Worker’s Charge

A 24-year-old former employee, Mike Smith, is charging that management kept blacks in menial jobs and routinely subjected them to racial slurs and segregation while reserving the better jobs for whites.

At nearly the same time, firefighters are charging that blacks were hired only in designated “black jobs,” that sleeping quarters in the fire department were highly segregated and that racial epithets were common.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has taken on both cases and is taking the employers to court.

“In the 1980s you don’t have black jobs and only blacks apply for it,” said Travis Payne, a lawyer representing the 35 firefighters who charged racial separation and abuse. “You see employment practices that hearken back to the 1950s, not the middle 1980s.

“I think it’s astonishing that an assistant fire chief would go around using the word nigger and nobody would think anything about it.

“I was totally shocked. I’ve never seen a case so overt. And now the case at the Pepsi Cola plant. Now we have two cases in the same town.”

Jacksonville, home of Camp Lejeune, with its 40,000 Marines and the attendant topless bars and tattoo parlors, already has a rough reputation, which residents say is not deserved.

“It’s a picture that is painted of this town and one that is terribly inaccurate,” said Howard Stein, who operates a chain of tire businesses.

Stein said the city’s reputation makes attracting workers to the city of 29,000 difficult.

“They have an image that at 4 o’clock every afternoon, 30,000 to 40,000 Marines come charging off the base brandishing a sword in one hand and a machine gun in the other,” he said. “And it simply isn’t that way at all.”

But Stein, who hails from one of only 26 Jewish families in Jacksonville, said the abuses alleged in the lawsuit involving Pepsi could certainly have happened.

‘Full of Rednecks’

“If you’re asking me if I think it’s possible for it to happen, I’d say yes,” Stein said. “This town is full of rednecks.”

Among Smith’s allegations in the Pepsi suit are that:

- The Pepsi franchise employed blacks as helpers for white truck drivers on delivery routes and made it clear the truck driving positions were not open to blacks when openings occurred.

- Blacks were made the butt of racial jokes and slurs.

- Blacks were not allowed to enter an office to use vending machines without a white escort. Managers said it was because money was counted in the same room and thefts had occurred.

- Blacks were assigned a block of parking spaces farther from the building than those assigned to whites.

- Whites were allowed to use forklifts to load trucks, but blacks were not.

- Whites were allowed to help themselves to a buffet at a company Christmas dinner, while blacks had their plates served by supervisors.

‘White Man’s Job’

Smith said when he made casual inquiries about a job as a truck driver he was told, “That’s a white man’s job.”

Another former Pepsi worker, Tim Ambrose, said he never applied for a truck driving job because he knew it would be futile. Ambrose said he overheard a supervisor say, “ ‘The only thing a black man around here could drive is a two-wheel push cart.’ I knew right then there wasn’t no sense in me even asking.”

After his complaint, Smith said tension at the plant reached such a level that he developed an ulcer and began carrying a gun in his car.

“I could feel the hatred,” Smith said.

New Job, Back Pay Sought

The suit, filed in mid-September, alleges that Smith was fired for filing the 1984 complaint and asks for his reinstatement and promotion to truck driver. He also seeks back pay commensurate with the amount of money he would have earned had he been a truck driver since the day of his firing.

Joseph Austin, a New Bern lawyer representing the Pepsi franchise, denied that there was any intentional job discrimination and rejected charges that blacks were subjected to verbal abuse and segregation.

Austin has also asked that the case be dismissed, claiming that EEOC lawyers made too little effort to settle the case out of court before filing suit.

“They did not attempt to negotiate in good faith,” Austin said. “All they wanted was a lawsuit, and that’s what they got.”

Tardiness, Absenteeism Cited

John Meuser, an EEOC lawyer, said the suit was prompted by Pepsi’s unwillingness to reinstate and promote Smith.

“If it got out that EEOC couldn’t protect somebody who came through those doors with a complaint, we might as well close our doors,” Meuser said.

Austin said Smith was fired for tardiness and absenteeism, not for filing the complaint. But Meuser said there were black workers with worse records than Smith’s who were not dismissed.

Black workers blame plant manager Stacy Brinson for the harsh working conditions. Ambrose said he once heard Brinson joke about how he would not let a black drive, or even sit in, a new company car.

Angered His Boss

“You act like a white boy,” Smith said he was told when he laughed and cut up too much with white workers. Smith said he also angered his boss when he was visited at the plant by a white woman.

Smith said the company tried to buy off the black helpers by giving them all a $64-a-week raise. He called the pay hike “hush-hush” money and said he was continually called into the office by supervisors who asked him when he was going to drop the complaint.

Smith said he also was subjected to harassment. He said one white worker threw paint on his car and another kicked a drink crate out from under him and said, “You can sit on the floor.”

James Kellum, a white driver, said that many of the charges made by Smith and others were fabrications.

Story Disputed

“As far as that Christmas dinner was concerned, I know that was made up,” Kellum said. “I know we never had no black salesmen, and that’s not right. But a lot of this stuff these boys are telling, that’s not right either.”

Kellum said some whites at the plant did use racial slurs “in a joking way” and that Brinson had difficulty getting along with some black workers.

“The boss man has been talked to two or three times about his attitude,” Kellum said.

Meuser said that problems at the plant may be largely attributable to Brinson.

Company Backs Brinson

“They (black workers) seem pretty convinced that much of what they’ve suffered through is because of this individual,” Meuser said. “One of the things we may seek through this court action is his removal.”

Brinson declined comment. But Austin, the company’s lawyer, said the company will fight efforts to have Brinson demoted.

“We stand by Mr. Brinson. We feel like he is a competent manager and he is doing a good job there,” Austin said.

The Fire Department case was referred to the Justice Department when an EEOC investigation found grounds for the charges.

Caught in a Trap

City Manager James Caldwell said the city was caught in a trap because in an effort to rectify past inequities, the fire chief had tried to maintain a certain number of black firefighters.

“To me, the fact that a black firefighter got hired when one resigned doesn’t indicate discrimination at all but an effort to maintain an integrated work force,” Caldwell said.

The city was accused of creating white-only jobs and black-only jobs according to a racial quota.

David Johnson, a white firefighter who signed the complaint, said blacks were assigned to separate sleeping quarters. “There was one bedroom, back at the end of the hall, that was referred to as ‘the ghetto,’ ” he said.

Slurs and Fear

Blacks also were subjected to racial slurs, he added.

“They were afraid, maybe not of physical harm, but afraid of losing their jobs,” Johnson said.

James Smith, a black former firefighter and no relation to Mike Smith, is the complainant in the firefighters’ suit. He said he was asked when he interviewed for the job, “How do you feel about being called racial slurs?”

He rallied a fledgling union to his cause, which led to the complaint.

Caldwell, noting that 28 of the 33 firefighters who signed the complaint were white, said that firefighters used it to get back at the city for refusing to recognize the union. James Smith and Johnson staunchly denied the charge.

Slurs Banned

Caldwell said directives have since been issued against racial slurs on the job, ordering that violators be “reported through the channels.”

He said that any segregated sleeping at the firehouses was by custom, not design, and that he believes that the fact that two severe discrimination cases have surfaced in Jacksonville at the same time is a coincidence.

“Generally speaking, there are less black-white issues here than in the typical eastern North Carolina town of this size--or any eastern North Carolina town above 5,000,” Caldwell said.

Black leaders agreed that discrimination today usually is less overt than in the two publicized cases.

‘It’s More Subtle’

“We don’t have that outward discrimination like the Pepsi plant. It’s more subtle,” said Adam Mattocks, chairman of the Onslow County chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “We’re no worse than a lot of communities. If you want to see segregation, go up North.”

Meuser, the EEOC lawyer, said he also does not believe the two cases are characteristic of race relations in Jacksonville.

“It sounds to me more like the kind of thing that we all would have expected to have passed out of the scene by now,” Meuser said. “This is no indictment of Jacksonville, the South or anywhere else. This is something of an aberration.”