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Buford City Schools settles in racial discrimination lawsuit

By Lauren Hunter Multimedia Journalist
Posted 11:27AM on Wednesday 30th December 2020 ( 3 years ago )

A racial discrimination lawsuit between Buford City Schools and a former school employee has been settled in court.

The lawsuit also prompted the resignation of former Buford City Schools Superintendent Geye Hamby, who was accused of using racial epithets in uncovered audio recordings.

According to a report from the Gwinnett Daily Post, court records show that the school system settled earlier this month with former paraprofessional Mary Ingram, who filed the lawsuit. The case went into court-ordered mediation before its settlement. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in court documents.

Ingram claimed that she was fired following a disagreement with Hamby over the school district’s colors. Ingram wanted the color gold to be included because it represented the city’s Black school district before its integration in 1969.

The person identified as Hamby in the audio recordings used in the lawsuit can be heard saying, “(Expletive) that (n-word). I’ll kill these (expletive) — shoot that (expletive) if they’d let me. All right. Well, check out what’s going on with all these (n-word) out here.”

Once the recordings became public, members of the community flooded the school board’s meeting room to voice their concern.

Hamby was placed on administrative leave in August of 2018 after news broke of the lawsuit. He resigned three days later.

Attorneys for the school district attempted to get the lawsuit dismissed, however U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross declined and allowed the audio recordings to be used as evidence at trial.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2020/12/966728/buford-city-schools-settles-in-racial-discrimination-lawsuit

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