The St. Louis city chapter of the NAACP is planning an educational billboard campaign following several reports of racial intimidation in workplaces across the St. Louis region.
Missouri Central School Bus, which provided transportation for thousands of St. Louis Public Schools students, came under fire in February after a diesel mechanic claimed a noose was intentionally placed near his workstation.
The bus company announced a couple of months ago it is ending its contract with the district, citing financial problems and a lack of adequate staffing.
But that isn’t the only case of a noose being found in workspaces across the region this year. St. Louis city NAACP President Adolphus Pruitt said that every month since January, people including various construction workers, as well as an employee from the city’s refuse department, have reported cases of nooses being hung and displayed as an intimidation tactic in their workspaces.
Black workers have been called racial slurs in some instances, and contractors and construction workers are being subjected to unsafe working conditions, Pruitt said.
“In the St. Louis region, violence is not the only issue impacting people, but the heightened discrimination and racial intimidation in the workplace is just as viable as anything else,” Pruitt said Tuesday morning during a press conference at the NAACP offices in Fountain Park. “I've been president of NAACP for 14 years now in St. Louis. I can only remember one or two incidents involving the noose over that 14-year period until 2024.”
Pruitt said the organization plans on filing more federal hate crime complaints and will rely on government agencies to handle the investigation. The civil rights group is planning a billboard campaign that will call attention to the various cases of nooses in workplaces.
Photos of the various nooses will be highlighted on the billboards, Pruitt said.
“Every month in 2024, there’s been an incident of some sort of noose involving somebody's workplace, even within city government,” Pruitt said. “And I don't know what June holds going forward. But this issue of workforce intimidation, workforce discrimination, is just outright disrespectful.
“We have to get a point across that this sort of behavior is not going to be tolerated. And we’re not going to sit on our hands about it.”
Pruitt said there have been more than 11 cases of Black refuse workers being discriminated against. In most cases, repercussions involved the accused having to go through discrimination training and other internal behavioral programs. He said the new campaign will kick off sometime in July.
