Black Workers, Including Lawrence "Lonnie" Powell, Say Drinking Fountains, Bathrooms Segregated at Philadelphia Trash-Handling Facility

I came across an interesting article on Philadelphia Daily News' website and I want to share it with my readers because the allegations are very troubling. Lawrence "Lonnie" Powell, who is employed at the city's Northwest Transfer Station in Roxborough since 2003, said that since he began working at the trash-handling plant,  he has had to seek the superintendent named as John Gill's permission to go to the bathroom — then descend five flights of stairs to use it. Powell, 58, who is black, said that the white employees have been permitted to use a bathroom just 25 feet from his work station. He is one of five current and former employees who have alleged in legal documents that the station's white superintendent has discriminated against them because they are black. Did we revert to the 1950s when the scourge of racism was a bloodstain on the fabric of American life as we knew it?

Clarena I.W. Tolson, commissioner of the city's Streets Department, which runs the station, declined to discuss the matter and referred questions to the City Solicitor's Office. An assistant city solicitor has denied the black workers' allegations.

Among those allegations is that for several years Gill has kept a "supervisor's bathroom," one flight up from Gill's office, that "only the white employees were allowed to use...whether or not they were supervisors," Powell wrote in an affidavit last month.

"Quite often, while I'm up there, I could be sitting in my booth, and I see white guys going into the bathroom," Powell said in an interview. "They walk right by the door and go right in the bathroom there. That's maybe 25 feet away from where I'm at." But when he has to go to the bathroom, he said, he has to go down to Gill's office to get permission, then descend five more flights.

Two other black workers, Gibson Trowery, 55, and Leslie Young Jr., 51, filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission in October 2007 and a lawsuit in January alleging discrimination by the city and infliction of extreme emotional distress by Gill.

Howard K. Trubman, a Center City attorney representing the black workers at the station, said that the law permits Trowery and Young to take their case to court because the PHRC did not rule within a year. But black workers had complained in writing about what they considered racism at the station as far back as 1999, Young and Trubman said. In August 2007, Powell aired the black employees' grievances in a meeting with Gill and Streets Department Deputy Commissioner Carlton Williams, who then ordered Gill to open the supervisor's bathroom to everyone, court documents show.

Water cooler in the closet -- the building in which the men work, located up the hill from the Schuylkill at Domino Lane and Umbria Street, had been the city's Northwest Incinerator — the outside wall still calls it that — until the city switched from a trash-burning system several years ago. Meanwhile, white workers were allowed to use a water cooler in Gill's office, the lawsuit says.

Gill, 53, is a 35-year city employee who was earning $53,585 a year as of last November, according to city records. He succeeded his father, also named John Gill, as the station's superintendent, documents show. Source: Philadelphia Daily News

The lawsuit is scheduled to be heard in February 2010. Wow, this certainly has the appearance of the Deep South in the 1950s. If these allegations are true, this is a disgrace and should not be tolerated one bit. People complain that we have moved into a post-racial America, but that's wishful thinking if these allegations are proven to be true in a court of law. No one deserves to suffer such indignities in this country.