Noose/Photo courtesy of Daily Beast
Takiya Lawson-McCants, a therapist at Alabama Mentor, found a noose on her property after experiencing months of racially hostile behavior at work.
Last week, Lawson-McCants filed a lawsuit against her former employer for retaliation after a dramatic chain of events that ended with someone leaving a noose at her home, Daily Beast reported.
The therapist was initially hired at Alabama Mentor’s Birmingham location and shortly after became the target of harassment that made the workplace a hostile work environment.
In the lawsuit, Lawson-McCants claims that a white co-worker bragged about living in a sundown town. A sundown town is a community where Black people were unwelcome to the extent that being there after sunset could place them at serious risk of white violence.
The plaintiff claims that the co-worker in question told her that they had a relative hanging Black people who did not leave the town by dusk.
The co-worker also verbalized racist language such as “n***er,” “black b*tch,” “slave,” and “monkeys.”
Lawson-McCants and another Black colleague reported the woman, but instead of being reprimanded or terminated, she was promoted. That is when the retaliation began.
White co-workers alleged began a group chat where they would talk about Black employees and criticized the Black foster parents the center interacted with. Alabama Mentor is a foster care assistant center.
Once Lawson-McCants tried to file a formal complaint, the situation further eroded. She found a noose in her backyard and was beleaguered with calls from the co-worker’s hometown that warned her that the Ku Klux Klan is still active there.
Lawson-McCants went to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to file a complaint. However, Alabama Mentor hired a defense team and made arbitration agreements mandatory in connection with her employment.
She is seeking punitive relief for humiliation and mental anguish. She also wants Alabama Mentor to institute programs that will prevent workplace discrimination.