Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
An Oregon woman has been awarded $1m by a jury after facing racist discrimination at a gas station where the attendant told her: “I don’t serve Black people.”
A jury in Multnomah county reached the decision after a four-day trial in a case in which Rose Wakefield from Portland claimed an attendant at the gas station had refused to serve her because of her race.
In March 2020, Nigel Powers, an attendant at the Jacksons gas station in Washington county, Oregon, kept passing over Wakefield to serve other customers, even those who had arrived after her.
He repeatedly dismissed her as she attempted to get his service and she then walked inside the store to ask for assistance, according to surveillance camera footage.
Even though another employee then helped her, Powers told Wakefield as she was leaving: “I don’t serve Black people,” and went on to laugh in her face.
“I was like, ‘What world am I living in?’” Wakefield told KGW of her immediate feeling. “This is not supposed to go down like that. It was a terrible, terrible confrontation between me and this guy.”
According to her lawyer Gregory Kafoury, she initially thought of forgetting about it. She shared with her friends that it was too unpleasant for her to think about.
Eventually, Kafoury said, she realized she had to “do something about it”.
Wakefield tried to file a complaint with the managers on two occasions the week after the incident, but the managers did not pay much heed to it. A message she left on the phone of the regional manager was deleted.
The $1m also included a $550,000 punitive damage fee.
Jacksons Food Stores said in a statement to KGW that they “respectfully disagree” with the jury’s ruling because upon “carefully reviewing” all the information, they believe that their “knowledge does not align with the verdict”.
