Opinion ID: 2978769
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Louvenia Armstrong

Text: -3- No. 08-6376 Armstrong v. Whirlpool Louvenia Armstrong has been employed at the La Vergne Whirlpool facility since 1984. In support of her hostile work environment claim, Armstrong alleged that racial harassment by Dale Travis, a co-worker and union steward, was “an ongoing thing every day that we had to listen to.” During her deposition, Armstrong stated that Dale Travis used the words “ni” and “uppity ni” frequently, that Travis would call African-American employees “white boys,” that she heard Travis say that African Americans should stay with their own kind, and that Travis was generally “just cussing and making jokes, you know, about blacks.” She also alleged that she had heard a coworker whose name she could not recall refer to African Americans as lazy, use the phrase, “may the klan be with you,” and state that “he was going to tell his KKK buddies about—about us.” Armstrong stated in her deposition that another co-worker constantly referred to her as “gal,” a term with racist connotations, and that she did not know of any other employees with whom the co-worker used that term. Armstrong also stated that on one occasion a number of Caucasian workers wore pins bearing the image of the Confederate flag, and that on another occasion a Caucasian supervisor threw out a cake that an African-American employee had made. Although Armstrong did not ever witness racist graffiti in the plant personally, she did allege that she had learned that there was racist graffiti at the plant. In addition to these allegations of racial harassment, Armstrong’s complaint contains numerous allegations of racial harassment that she neither witnessed nor learned of except by reason of this litigation.