Court: Texas Company Unfair To Black Workers

DANNY ROBBINS

LUFKIN, Texas (AP) — State historical markers outside the headquarters of Lufkin Industries Inc. tell how the company started repairing sawmill equipment at the turn of the 20th century and grew to make many of the pumps dotting the world's oil fields.

But a different history has been written in a class-action lawsuit winding to a close. That story describes how the 107-year-old company for years discriminated against its black employees, assigning them to the worst jobs and repeatedly denying them promotions.

More than a thousand of the company's current and former black employees stand to divvy up $5.5 million in back pay and interest as compensation for what a federal judge in June called the company's unlawful discrimination in awarding promotions.

While each worker will get a relatively modest sum, those who brought the lawsuit see the award as validation of their struggle for equality in a region often associated with racial turmoil — most famously the 1998 dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr., by three white men in nearby Jasper.

"It's not about the money," said Sylvester McClain, 62, the former employee who initiated the suit. "It's about equal pay, equal treatment, equal justice."