A white Georgia superintendent was allegedly recorded in a racist rant in which he used the N-word eight times and spoke of wanting to kill black construction workers.
The audio recordings emerged amid a racial discrimination lawsuit filed against Buford School District Superintendent Geye Hamby by his former employee, Mary Ingram.
Hamby was allegedly recorded in two separate conversations discussing African-American workers at a construction site, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
It remains unclear when the remarks were made, who Hamby was allegedly speaking to, and where the recordings came from.
The horrific audio – which has not been released to the public – begins with a voice, allegedly belonging to Hamby, discussing workers from a temp agency.
‘How much are they charging us for?’ he can be heard asking. ‘Can you show me our general conditions, how many of these damn deadbeat n*****s’.
‘They said they’re from a temp service, so I guess…have you got more of these big n*****s than the ones from the temp service?’
Hamby then allegedly begins complaining about one man, who he calls a ‘deadbeat n****r’ that was on his cell phone.
‘He said he worked for the temp service and he didn’t have to do what the f**k we tell him to do. F**k that n****r,’ Hamby allegedly says in the recording.
‘I kill these damn – shoot that n****r – if they let me.’
He then tells the person on the other end of the line: ‘Well, check out what’s going on with all the n*****s down here. Thank you.’
In the second recording, the voice allegedly belonging to Hamby can once again be heard complaining about the workers and saying they have a ‘damn attitude’.
‘I know Phillip told two of the n*****s to get off the damn job site,’ he tells someone.
‘Send us a park-quality person. Don’t send us a deadbeat n****r from a temp service. S**t, we can find you some kids around here that want a damn job.
‘We’ve got young kids right here that put in the work. They can do more than the damn deadbeat n*****s – but I mean it’s too late on this damn job. Find out why in the hell we still have them. Bye.’
Ingram, 66, filed a lawsuit against Hamby and the Buford school district in June, claiming she was the victim of racial discrimination and retaliation.
The former city school district employee alleges that issues began with Hemby when she asked him why the color gold wasn’t included in the district’s emblem.
Gold represented the city’s black school district before Buford was integrated in 1969.
‘I was afraid we were about to lose our heritage,’ Ingram told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ‘I wanted them to know it was important to the community.’
Ingram presented a petition to include gold in the emblem to the school board in 2014 and brought up the issue at City Hall meetings.
Weeks after she questioned Hamby about the emblem, she said she bumped into the superintendent in a hallway.
When she asked Hamby why she hadn’t heard from him, she claims he replied: ‘I didn’t speak to you and I don’t have to and probably would never speak to you again.’
Ingram said the superintendent later called her into a meeting and said he wanted to be told in advance what she planned to say at school board and city commission meetings.
She refused, saying it was a violation of her First Amendment rights.
Then, Ingram claims, she began to get written up frequently at work despite more than a decade of ‘glowing evaluations’ with the district.
She alleges that she was even told to stop encouraging children to smile after they got off the bus in the morning before school, according to the lawsuit.
After two years, Ingram was fired and told she was ‘perceived as being disrespectful, argumentative, unfriendly, and not a good fit in a school environment’.
Ingram said she ‘couldn’t move’ when she heard the news.
‘I just froze,’ she added. ‘My legs felt weak. Before this happened, I looked forward every morning to getting up and going to work to do things for the children.’
But Ingram said she didn’t decide to sue Hamby until she heard the audio recordings.
‘This is the man who is over our children,’ she said.
The district said that Ingram was ‘terminated for cause and neglect of her duties’, a claim that her attorney, Ed Buckley, disputes.
‘She was well thought of by principals and children and very dedicated to what she did,’ he said.
‘It’s disgraceful that she would be fired because of her race and the race of her constituents for whom she stood up in public meetings during the exercise of her First Amendment rights.’
Hamby refused to comment on the suit to the AJC, saying only that it was a ‘personnel and legal matter pertaining to a disgruntled employee’.
Meanwhile, the school district continues to deny that Hamby uses racist language.
Walt Britt, who is representing the school board, claims it has been unable to determine the ‘veracity and authenticity’ of the recordings.
Britt also claims that Ingram has ‘failed or refused to produce the original recordings for testing or provide any information concerning the background or foundation of the recording’.
Buckley denied Britt’s claims, saying he hired an expert to analyze the audio and that the district has the recordings as they are ’embedded in the complaint’.
SOURCE: Daily Mail
BCNN1 WP 