A Black employee who’s experienced racial bias at the Obion County Highway Department stumbled across a disturbing manual.
Deandre Adams has been working with the county department for seven years and said he’s experienced countless racial incidents at his job. However, he was shocked when he discovered when a racist pamphlet in writing titled “The Nigger Owner’s Manual.”
“I was shaken when I saw that,” the victim’s lawyer Kathy Laughter-Laizure told WREG. “I think that we who are not of color sometimes sit in our happy places and want to believe that this kind of thing doesn’t go on anymore.”
Adams was searching through a file cabinet that he used on a regular when he found the four-page manual.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the attorney added.
The racist guide the victim found two weeks ago instructs on how to install, configure, house, entertain and murder Black people according to the news station. It also features titles such as “My nigger keeps raping white women.”
Adam reported the document to his supervisor who told him not to say anything and said “we will take care of it,” but the victim feels the situation wasn’t appropriately dealt with according to his attorney.
Laizure said her client has also endured extensive racist jokes. “A guy who was a forearm at the place one day fashioned a noose and waved it at Mr. Adams. He had a comment to the effect of, ‘Ain’t this a part of your heritage?” Laizure explained.
The news outlet reached out to the Obion County Highway Department, who directed Wreg to their attorney Steve Conley.
Conley said to reporters, “It’s horrible what I just read.”
Many Union City residents declined to comment on the racist manual and refused to speak about the incident although they don’t support the pamphlet’s bigoted message.
Conley said he plans on involving authorities and hopes to scan the fingerprints of the suspects involved.
