The construction site for the BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee headquarters in Chattanooga was a racially charged place in 2008, jurors were told Monday in federal court.
One former black employee claims he was fired when he talked about the racism to local media.
In opening statements Monday in U.S. District Court, Randall Larramore, attorney for construction worker Chad Byers, told the jury that, from the time Byers was hired at the construction site in June until mid-August 2008, racial tensions were ignored until they "festered" out of control.
Larramore said Byers' employer, J.M. Hanner Construction Co., was told of racial epithets on portable toilet walls and tables and racial slurs from other subcontractors but did little to stop the behavior until workers found a noose hanging one morning in an elevator shaft on the site.
Hanner is a black-owned business and about 90 percent of its employees are black.
Byers said he was fired after Hanner believed he had talked with the media about problems at the site after being told not to.
But Keith Grant, attorney for Hanner, said Byers was fired for repeated poor job performance and disobeying instructions.
"Mr. Byers wants to say it's about race," Grant said. "It was about his poor employment record."
Byers is alleging civil rights violations, racial discrimination and retaliation. He is seeking jury-awarded damages for lost pay. The trial resumes this morning in Judge R. Allen Edgar's courtroom.
Byers had been hired as a temporary construction worker by Hanner, who is black, under a job program for workers with criminal histories, Larramore said. The company had been subcontracted by Skanska USA Building to do safety work.
Larramore described a work site in which racial divisiveness was escalating, beginning with slurs and swastikas on bathroom walls and lunch tables before culminating in the noose discovery.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents came to the site after the noose was found by an employee, the same day some black workers began getting sick, Larramore said.
The job site was shut down for the day.
Local media interviewed some workers that day, but Hanner had told workers not to talk with the press until investigators figured out what happened, both attorneys said.
After seeing Byers and another employee talking with a reporter, Hanner reprimanded the pair and walked away, but looked back to see Byers taking a business card from the reporter, the lawyers said.
Hanner fired Byers after that exchange.
Contact staff writer Todd South at tsouth@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347.