Kansas coach says he was fired for complaining about racial discrimination at school
As the only Black faculty member of a southeast Kansas middle school, Gary Floyd Sr. says he was subject to racial slurs and other offensive conduct.
Yet after he complained multiple times about mistreatment, his superiors did nothing to correct the behavior and he was fired, Floyd alleges in a federal lawsuit he filed last week against the Fort School public school district.
He was terminated last spring from his job as a para-educator and head coach of the football and boys’ basketball teams at Fort Scott Middle School. His son Gary Floyd Jr. is a coach at Fort Scott High School.
The suit filed in federal district court in Kansas City, Kansas, seeks monetary damages and attorney fees against the district where Floyd was employed from August 2019 until March 29, 2021.
According to the lawsuit, Floyd’s immediate supervisor, who was white, forbid him and his students from making Black Lives Matter signs because she said she was “sick of this black stuff” and was “tired of everybody thinking that blacks are being mistreated.”
She also once asked him if he considered himself Black, African American or “colored,” the suit said.
It also alleges that a student in Floyd’s class repeatedly called him the “n” word and threatened to kill his wife and family. A vice principal heard the student make the remarks, but no corrective action was taken, Floyd contends.
“Instead, on the day Plaintiff Floyd made his last complaint of discrimination and harassment, (the district) terminated his employment,” according to the lawsuit.
Floyd’s attorney in Kansas City, Nicholas J. Walker, declined further comment, as did district superintendent Ted Hessong.
This story was originally published April 12, 2022 at 12:14 PM.
