Alabama Black Man Sues Restaurant Over Alleged Racial Slurs, Swastika Messages And More

Source: Jacob Boomsma / Getty

Popular restaurant chain Jack’s Family Restaurant is currently the defendant in a civil rights lawsuit filed by attorneys for a Black former employee in Warrior, Alabama, who says his experience at the dining establishment was one where he was subjected to racial slurs, white supremacist material and a branch manager who would insist that he simply “let it go” whenever he complained about any of it.

According to an email sent to NewsOne by HKM Employment Attorneys LLP, the law firm that filed the suit this week in federal court in Birmingham, Alabama, Tevin Burrow, the plaintiff, worked at the Jack’s Family Restaurant location on Russell Hill Drive in Warrior. There, he was “constantly berated with racial slurs,” the lawsuit claims. Burrow alleges that one of his former coworkers repeatedly called him the N-word, even in front of customers, and the manager at the branch would tell him to “let it go.” And that’s arguably not the worst of it.

From HKM:

Later, Burrow logged into an online chat utilized by the manager and other employees for official scheduling purposes. Unfortunately, the chat was not limited to work-related information as several employees used it to display  Nazi swastikas, the “White power” skull image and other white nationalist propaganda glorifying white supremacy and Nazi ideology.

When Burrow complained, his complaints were dismissed by the same general manager. The general manager, Trent Miller, had also posted comments joking about Hitler and telling Burrow that “HR doesn’t care what we do here as long as we make money.”

The complaint claims Burrow did ultimately contact Human Resources, but it took HR “a month to respond,” which, apparently, didn’t matter anyway because he was already terminated from his job “roughly a week after reaching out to HR.”

“No employee should have to learn to accept racist slurs and white supremacist rhetoric to keep their job,” HKM attorney Artur Davis said in a statement. “To this day, the manager who tolerated this kind of workplace appears to still be employed at Jack’s while my client was let go within a week of his complaint. Ninety-nine percent of the people who spend money at Jack’s would expect better.”

Davis also provided a copy of the lawsuit, which included screenshots purported to be the white supremacist propaganda in Jack’s online chatroom. The suit, which details what Tevin Burrow said he experienced, doesn’t specify a dollar amount, but it does state that it seeks compensation for “lost wages and benefits,” “compensatory damages to the extent allowed by law,” “punitive damages based on the Defendant’s malice or reckless indifference to Plaintiff’s federally protected rights to be free from race discrimination or retaliation,” “attorneys’ fees and costs of litigation,” and “prejudgment and post-judgment interest at the highest lawful rate.”

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