‘Lazy N—er!’: Black Employees Were Called Racial Slurs, Subjected to Nooses and Blocked from Promotions at Tennessee Power Company

Three Black employees who filed separate federal civil rights lawsuits accusing Nashville Electric Service (NES) of racial discrimination in its employment practices, including managers who allegedly hurled racist slurs at and denied promotions to Black employees in favor of white workers, have confidentially settled with the utility, reported The Tennessean.Electrician Walter E. Clark III was a 22-year-employee of NES when he sued the company in the U.S. District Court For the Middle District of Tennessee in January of 2023, describing a racially hostile work environment where Black employees were regularly called “lazy n—ger,” “boy,” and suffered ongoing harassment and bullying from supervisors and co-workers because of their race.His complaint recounts an episode in June of 2020 when a white foreman allegedly told him, “I’ll tell you how to train that son of a b-tch … put a white sheet over your head and go out there beat the sh-t out of him until he hates all white people.” Clark also regularly heard or was made aware of other racist epithets and slurs from co-workers, including, “need to have slaves again to Make America Great Again,” none of which were addressed by management when Black employees complained, he alleges.He and plaintiff...