Bus Trip to Focus on Coke’s Policies

With a nod to the civil rights activists before them, a busload of demonstrators left Saturday for a five-day journey to draw attention to their struggle with Coca-Cola, which they accuse of racial bias.

The trip, called “The Ride for Justice,” will have its first stop today in Greensboro, N.C., the scene of lunch counter sit-in demonstrations 40 years ago.

Bus riders, flanked by their friends and family, loaded apples, cookies, potato chips and even a few cans of Coke on the bus Saturday.

“There’s Coke on this bus?” asked Angela Graham, who lost her job in February. “Well, we haven’t started the boycott yet.”

The Rev. E. Randel Osburn, vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led a prayer Saturday before the bus left Atlanta, where Coke is based.

“Coke is really not the real thing unless it does the real thing, which is justice,” Osburn said. “We feel about Coke the way we feel about America; it is better than most companies, but it is still not what it ought to be.”

Other rallies are planned Monday at a Baptist church in Richmond, Va., and Tuesday at the Capitol in Washington.

The trip ends Wednesday in Wilmington, Del., where the group will attend Coke’s annual shareholders meeting. They hope to press the beverage maker to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by eight current and former employees. A Coke spokesman said the company had no comment Saturday.

The lawsuit alleges that Coke’s black workers have been denied fair pay, promotions, raises and performance evaluations. Coke denies the allegations. The company estimates that 27% of its 28,000 U.S. employees are minorities, including 15% of American managers.

Plaintiffs want a federal judge to certify the lawsuit as a class action, which would include up to 2,000 Coke workers in the United States.

Toni Meadows, a former Coke consumer marketing researcher who was laid off in February, said she hopes the bus ride makes Coke aware of its treatment of blacks.

“What I’m hoping is that the company recognizes that there is a problem,” Meadows said. “This suit and bus ride is about affirmative action and protecting the rights that blacks have fought for all these years.”

Franklin McCain, one of the four North Carolina A&T; University students who sought to integrate the Woolworth lunch counter in 1960, said the Coke protesters face a far different environment.

“There is no sign on the door saying ‘colored’ and ‘white,’ ” said McCain, 58, a retired sales executive. “However, there are still some signs in parts of our lives that make it difficult. It’s at a much higher level, a level that’s not seen so easily.

“Forty years ago, those people couldn’t have even worked for Coke,” he said.