A Black woman whose job at FedEx once included providing security detail for the global transportation giant’s late founder and former CEO, Fred Smith, has filed a $6 million lawsuit claiming that she was fired after complaining about racially abusive language and a hostile workplace at its Memphis headquarters.
Barbara Blake started working at FedEx in 1997 and held various security positions, including dispensing weapons to the company’s other security officers; tracking cash, drugs, and weapons shipped in packaging; and, from 2018 to 2024, acting as an armed security guard to top FedEx executives, including guarding their homes.
Blake, who earned $82,000 a year, says she enjoyed her job and had not been written up for misconduct or performance issues until she began making complaints about racist language used by her white co-worker Johnny Skeen, according to her lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Tennessee on July 30 (and obtained by Atlanta Black Star).
In December 2021, Blake informed her supervisor, Darrell Jackson, that Skeen was regularly using racially offensive language with her and other Black employees, including referring to Black people using terms such as “nappy-headed” and “heathens,” the complaint says. Skeen also allegedly bragged about a beating of a Black woman while he was a police officer.
Blake also told Jackson, who is Black, that Skeen had said aloud in the FedEx squad room on December 23, 2021 that a Black person of interest in a crime report on TV was “a terrorist threat,” and that she had told him that she felt he “always used extreme descriptions when describing Black people,” the lawsuit says.
“I’m not racist,” Skeen allegedly replied, to which Blake responded, “You continuously make racist remarks.”
Her remark upset Skeen, who then reported Blake to Jackson for offending him, the lawsuit says.
Instead of investigating her claims against Skeen by interviewing fellow officers who had witnessed his racial remarks, the complaint says Jackson met with both Blake and Skeen several days later and issued each an Online Compliment or Counseling (OLCC), which the lawsuit describes as a non-documented warning in lieu of formal discipline. Accumulating three OLCCs would, however, lead to a warning letter or performance reminder, which are more serious in FedEx’s progressive discipline system.
The lawsuit argues that the online disciplinary measure issued to Blake by Jackson was based on her protected activity of reporting racial harassment and abuse, and thus was unlawful and retaliatory, and that more such adverse actions in response to her complaints would follow.
Over the next several months, the complaint says, Blake’s performance was “exemplary” and she was twice given “Bravo Zulu Awards” by Jackson and senior managers for defending the homes of FedEx execs, including spotting a home that was left open to burglary and quickly responding and alerting police to a mentally ill person near another executive’s home.
But Skeen kept making racially charged remarks that were not addressed by management throughout 2022, she says, including calling Black male security officers “boys” and calling Black female co-workers “nappy headed.”
In January 2023, Blake sought and received a transfer to FedEx Freight to get away from Skeen, afraid to report him again because she did not want to face another OLCC or other retaliatory discipline, the lawsuit says.
But Blake and Skeen tangled again in March 2023 over an email that Skeen sent to security officers relaying that he was told by an executive’s husband that his wife had “given a couple of black children” permission to play basketball in their driveway.
Blake responded privately to Skeen that his email was inappropriate and offensive, and also complained to Jackson about his “ongoing offensive behavior and comments.”
Skeen then complained about her email to Jackson, who issued Blake another online counseling demerit because she had been told previously not to respond to Skeen’s emails going forward. Blake asserted that she had the right to object to and oppose emails from Skeen containing “racist language.”
Concerned about Jackson’s unwillingness to address Skeen’s conduct, the complaint says, Blake set about gathering statements of Black FedEx security officers to shore up her allegations.
They included security officer Jasmine Wright, who wrote about Skeen’s degrading comments toward African-American women, noting that Skeen addressed his Black co-workers as “Hey, you heathens,” and claimed that Skeen had said he was “going to get Manager Jackson in check.’”
Former FedEx security officer Regina Smith provided a statement to Blake saying that she witnessed Skeen make racial comments, including calling her “nappy-headed,” and that he referred to other Black women as “Aunt Jemima,” the lawsuit says.
In June of 2023, Blake took her complaints about Jackson up the chain to senior management, submitting a written complaint that he had failed to follow company policy by not investigating her complaints against Skeen, and “thus perpetuating a racially hostile work environment,” attaching the supporting statements about him from one current and two former employees.
The following month, she was transferred from FedEx Freight back to FedEx World Headquarters and was required to work directly with Skeen.
In September 2023, she met with senior manager Avis Buford-Darling, who told her that Human Resources could not consider the written statements of former employees in its investigation of her complaint, and cautioned her that she should not conduct her own investigation into Skeen’s racist conduct, the lawsuit says.
In October 2023 Blake reported accidentally scratching a squad vehicle, she says for the first time in her career, to manager Ron Russell, who was covering for Jackson while he was on vacation. Russell told Blake it was “no big deal,” the complaint says, and did not issue her an OLCC.
But when he returned, Jackson did, which Blake believes was a retaliatory action for her complaints to management about “his failures to correct Skeen’s racist conduct.”
The lawsuit notes that in November 2023, Skeen admitted to damaging a tire on a company vehicle but was not disciplined in any way.
In November 2023, Blake filed an internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint about Skeen and Jackson’s unaddressed behavior and the hostile work environment she said she faced based on racial harassment and retaliation for her objecting to it, expressed in the form of disciplinary actions meant to “intimidate [her] into silence.”
While senior managers investigated her complaint, Donna “Ivy” McCraney, a Black co-worker, told Jackson that she had heard Blake say, “I’m going to get rid of Jackson.” Another security employee also said he heard Blake make a similar comment.
Blake vehemently denied making any such comments to her managers. The lawsuit contends that Jackson, who knew she had made an EEO complaint against him, “twisted the lawful and protected objections of Blake to racial discrimination and retaliation and Jackson’s failure to address both to claim they mean that Blake somehow intended to do physical harm to Jackson.”
In the end, as a result of her alleged negative comments about him, Jackson issued Blake a third OLCC on November 30, 2023, for not adhering to policy and not “conducting appropriate conversation in the workplace and how to appropriately bring concerns to your management chain.”
On December 6, 2023, Skeen received a warning letter with a paid suspension for inappropriate comments he made in the workplace — not for his racist comments, but for derisive remarks he made about Blake and her co-workers related to her EEO complaint, the lawsuit says.
In January 2024, as a result of Blake’s EEO complaint, FedEx determined its Memphis-based security team, including Jackson, should be retrained on acceptable conduct and anti-harassment policies, a decision not shared with Blake at the time.
Meanwhile, Blake was placed on a six-week investigative suspension for allegedly taking photographs of McCraney’s vehicle, which made her “afraid.” Blake denied this and let a senior manager look through photos on her cellphone, to no avail, she says.
When she returned from suspension on February 24, 2023, Blake was not given any disciplinary action, but says she was immediately subjected to harassment by management. Two anonymous complaints about her were submitted, alleging that she had violated the company’s workplace violence policy and had used threatening language, which Blake asserts were false.
On February 29, 2023, Blake was ushered into a conference room and asked if she had made any threats about FedEx employees, which she denied.
Jackson sat next to Blake and explained he was again placing her on investigative suspension, with pay, due to the alleged possible violations, and escorted her out of the building “while smirking and plainly amused,” the lawsuit says.
Blake claims that no investigation followed, and that no interviews were conducted regarding the anonymous complaints.
On March 15, 2024, she was called in and met with Buford-Darling, who terminated her “because of the volume of complaints about Blake’s conduct, and the substantiation of her use of threatening language in the workplace,” including “inappropriate communications with her peers” at World Headquarters on Jan. 5, 2024, that were “deemed as threatening.”
Blake did not work at the company’s headquarters on Jan. 5, she says, and was actually working overtime on her day off at a FedEx hub elsewhere. Pointing this out to her managers did no good, nor did reminding them that she was the victim of a hostile work environment because she had reported Skeen for calling Black women epithets such as “nappy-headed heifers,” which her managers dismissed as “hearsay,” the complaint says.
Blake’s firing was upheld in April 2024.
Her lawsuit says she will establish that a similarly situated white employee used profane and demeaning racist language and engaged in similar alleged misconduct but was not suspended or terminated.
It contends that Blake worked happily and satisfactorily for FedEx for 20 years, but that after filing the internal EEO complaint she was “suspended twice and then terminated within 3 months based on knowingly false and bogus reasons as pretext for Defendant’s unlawful retaliation.”
The lawsuit accuses FedEx of violating federal civil rights law by racially discriminating and retaliating against her, and seeks a judgment of at least $6 million against the company — $2 million to compensate her for loss of economic opportunities, loss of health insurance, emotional pain and suffering, stress and humiliation — and $4 million in punitive damages.
“We are committed to maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination of any kind,” a spokesperson for FedEx said in an emailed statement to Atlanta Black Star. “We deny the allegations and will defend the lawsuit.”
FedEx has 21 days to file a response to the complaint after being served, or until August 20.
In 2022, a Texas jury awarded a Black district sales manager who alleged she was fired by FedEx in retaliation for accusing her supervisor of racial discrimination $366 million — $1 million in compensatory damages and $365 million in punitive damages.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed the jury verdict, ruling that the punitive damages were excessive based on provisions in the woman’s employment contract, and reduced her award to $250,000, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported. The appeals court did agree with the plaintiff, finding that evidence supported the allegation that FedEx retaliated against her.
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