‘Like he was cracking a whip’: Jury says white Delaware road crew discriminated against Black co-worker, award him $1.3 million

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You couldn’t blame Kaligah Parker if he was feeling pretty good about his career prospects in the summer of 2023.

The 22-year-old Dover resident seemed well on his way to turning his life around after a felony drug conviction. Parker was also making about $45 an hour as a laborer and machine operator for Greggo & Ferrara Inc., a major Delaware road contractor that has received more than $215 million from state highway contracts since 2017.

But Parker, a Black man on a road crew with a handful of white guys, has long contended his work mates treated him with persistent racial hostility.

One man allegedly called him the N-word once, and referred to him as “boy” at least twice.

Another co-worker once ordered him to do something quickly and made a motion like he was cracking a whip, Parker asserted.

Another tossed pieces of a gum wrapper on the ground and allegedly told only Parker to pick them up.

Parker alleged that when he used the porta potty at the work site along the state Route 72 roadway, some guys in his crew threw rocks at it.

He claimed that one company leader, Cross Ferrara, ignored his own best friend’s repeated lateness for work but wrote disciplinary reports against Parker for being late.

The degrading treatment he endured, Parker contended in a lawsuit and during his trial testimony last month, constituted blatant racial discrimination. A Superior Court jury agreed, awarding Parker $1.28 million in damages, which his attorneys claim is one of the largest awards for a racial bias case in Delaware state court.

Greggo & Ferrara denied the allegations in court papers and during the recent five-day trial.

Parker’s attorney, Thomas Crumplar, said the defendants referred to the accusations as fabrications. Crumplar said a pivotal moment in court came when the company’s lawyer, Jeffrey Weiner, told the jury that Parker, who was hired through a state Department of Transportation program aimed at providing on-the-job training for “women, minorities and disadvantaged persons,” called him “our prized possession.”

“In rebuttal, we seized on that,” Crumplar told WHYY News.

Crumplar said he didn’t want Parker to speak with WHYY News for this article because Greggo & Ferrara is expected to appeal.

Parker was pardoned for his drug crime by Gov. Matt Meyer in June. He now runs The Carry Their Light Project, a nonprofit that aims to help youths through violence prevention and mentoring programs.

Weiner did not return calls to discuss the case and the outcome, nor did anyone from Greggo & Ferrara.

DelDOT spokesman C.R. McLeod said Greggo & Ferrara had to participate in the equal opportunity program because the highway project Parker worked on received federal funding.

As for Parker’s allegations and the jury’s findings, McLeod said DelDOT “does not condone discrimination of any kind.”

‘These older white men were jealous’ of Parker’s position

Parker enrolled in the DelDOT program and New Castle-based Greggo & Ferrara hired him as a laborer and roll operator in May 2022.

When he was let go 18 months later, his salary was about $45 an hour, his lawsuit said.

Parker’s appearance on the road crew rankled some veteran employees, Crumplar said, adding that only a handful of the company’s 150 employees are Black in a state where about 22% of the residents are Black.

Crumplar said the two laborers on the job, who didn’t have the chance to operate the machinery that Parker was being trained on, had been there for several years.

“These older white men were jealous of the fact that this young Black [man] who just started with the company had already been in the position to work as an operator where he could make significantly more money,” Crumplar said.

So “the older white men frequently antagonized Mr. Parker” in an attempt to make his “life miserable so that he would quit,” the lawsuit said.

Though Parker was required to spend about 1,000 hours on the roller machine for the DelDOT program, his supervisor only let him spend about 30 minutes a day but recorded eight hours on the recorder on Parker’s time sheet, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit cites racial harassment starting in July 2023, after Parker “had a breakdown while at home over a weekend due to the stress caused by his co-workers at work.”

That’s when he began using medical marijuana, and was selected for a “random” drug test by his supervisor. He tested positive and was fired, but was later rehired following a union grievance after he provided his Delaware medical marijuana card, which he had received in 2021, though he hadn’t used until July 2023, the lawsuit said.

That October, Parker claimed he asked a leader on the site for help and was told, “I ain’t helping you with s—,” the lawsuit said. But later that day, the same man ordered Parker to pick up pieces of gum wrappers off the ground while letting white workers leave early.

Other alleged incidents included sprinkling dirt into Parker’s buttocks when he bent over, tossing rocks at the porta potty while he was inside and excluding him from conversations.

The white men on his crew badmouthed Parker to other company employees so much that a foreman on a different crew told him about it and said they “were trying to get rid of him,’’ the lawsuit said.

Parker told supervisor ‘he could not take it,’ lawsuit alleged

Finally in November 2023, Parker complained to his supervisor, who was also white, but instead was asked why he missed some work days, the lawsuit said. Parker said it was because he was being antagonized and “he could not take it.”

The supervisor told Parker “he would have to have thick skin to work in construction, to not let his co-workers bother him, and that respect had to be earned,” the lawsuit said.

One day that month, Parker claimed he was forced to restack wood correctly in his truck, but he told his boss he “needed to leave for the day to cool off.” The supervisor let him go but then called the main office and said Parker “had voluntarily quit his job.”

That Friday, when he picked up his check, the foreman told Parker “he had not been treated fairly” and to report to work the next Monday. Instead, when he arrived at the job site, Parker was told he had “voluntarily quit” and didn’t have a job, the lawsuit said.

Parker was out of job but decided to take on the powerful contractor.

In February 2024, he filed racial discrimination complaints with the state Department of Labor and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After reviewing the allegations, both agencies later issued Parker right-to-sue letters.

He filed the lawsuit in January 2025, leading to last month’s trial and verdict in his favor. Parker testified for several hours, as did several members of his former work crew and company officials.

The jury ruled in favor of Parker within three hours, Crumplar said. They found Greggo & Ferrara liable for racial discrimination and subjecting Parker to a hostile work environment.

“It was credibility,” Crumplar said. “They believed us and didn’t believe them.”