Black deck hands awarded $1 million in discrimination suit

Jet, August 11, 1997

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded Black deck hands on a Mississippi River dredge, who were found to be the victims of racial slurs and discriminatory personnel practices, $1 million in compensatory damages.

The money will be divided evenly among 12 current workers, two retirees and the estates of two workers who have died since the deck hands filed their discrimination complaint with the Defense Department last year, the New York Times reported. Each person involved will receive $62,500.

"It came a little bit late, but it was worth it,n worker John Boyd said. He said "Sambo, little Black Sambo and the `n' word" were some of the racial insults.

Each of the current workers will also receive promotions, which will move them from seasonal jobs into full-year positions on the dredge called the Hurley, which is based in Memphis. The Hurley is a five-story, 300-foot-long vessel which dredges mud from the Mississippi River bottom during a shallow-water season that typically stretches from late spring into the fall. The corps will also provide the training needed for the workers to advance into higher-ranking jobs, reassign two on-shore managers who were responsible for activities on the Hurley, transfer two White dredge workers who were accused of using racial slurs and pay $194,242 in legal fees to the complainants' lawyer.

The settlement followed a Defense Department report, issued in April, that found the environment on the Hurley "permeated with malicious and reckless indifference toward Black employees." That report, based on an inquiry by the Pentagon's Office of Complaint Investigations, also concluded that White workers on the boat regularly used racial epithets and told racist jokes in the presence of Black co-workers and that White officers had deliberately "stifled the progress of African-American employees."

One of the Black workers, Randy C. Galloway, compared conditions on the boat to "modern-day slavery." Another, Chancey Wilson, said White officers "wanted you just to be a houseboy," the New York Times reported.

The report noted that until last year, all of the Hurley's full-year workers were White, while most of the seasonal workers were Black.

Two men became the first Blacks to be promoted from seasonal to full-year status in the 64-year history of the Hurley and the boat's predecessor, the Burgess. One man had not joined the bias suit. The other man promoted was a plaintiff in the suit, but the investigators concluded that his promotion had been designed "as a shield against a possible finding of discrimination."