It sounds like a dark chapter from a 1950s history book: Black workers barred from the main building, forced to enter only through a back door and segregated bathrooms in Tennessee. But according to a new federal lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, this wasn’t Jim Crow-era Memphis…it was 2022.
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The EEOC accused StoneMor GP, LLC, a subsidiary of Everstory Partners who owns over 40 funeral homes and cemeteries in the U.S., of discriminating against Forest Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Park’s Black workers. The complaint, filed on Feb. 6, alleged the cemetery’s area maintenance director Heath Fairfax and funeral director Brad Shooks—both white— of locking bathrooms in an effort to segregate the facilities in May 2022.
Black groundskeeping employees Louis Walker and Demetric Brownlee are named in the federal lawsuit, who were allegedly forced to use a nearby gas station restrooms instead for 10 days. Meanwhile, a break room located on the site’s upper floor was allegedly made available only to all-white executive management and professional-level white employees, secured with a combination lock.
The complaint alleged Sherrice Cates, StoneMor’s then-cemetery administrator who is Black, was refused the upper floor’s break room’s combination code when she requested it without explanation.
It was only after the Black groundskeepers— with the support of their Black supervisor Demarcus Benson— repeatedly complained about discrimination, they were notified they could use a first-floor, single-occupancy restroom only accessible through the building’s back door. Walker, according to the lawsuit, called it “inhospitable and unhygienic.”
Just two weeks after Benson first blew the whistle on the alleged bathroom restrictions, and only seven days after Fairfax allegedly threatened him with termination if his crew contacted the feds, Benson was out of a job. He was fired for an alleged burial mishap from January 2022 that occurred while he was on leave. Benson, who reportedly refused to use the building’s facilities in solidarity with his crew, was a supervisor who had been promoted several times in less than five years.
According to the EEOC, Benson’s firing wasn’t a coincidence— it was a calculated act of race-based retaliation designed to bury the truth. Now, the federal lawsuit says the timeline of Benson’s firing is damning as it seeks a permanent injunction, policy reforms, back pay, compensatory and punitive damages and a jury trial.
“Segregating employees by race and pressuring supervisors to silence discrimination complaints strike at the core of federal civil rights law,” Catherine Eschbach, acting EEOC General Counsel, said in a statement. “The EEOC will continue to hold employers accountable when they attempt to enforce discriminatory practices or retaliate against those who stand up for equal treatment in the workplace.”
As of this writing, StoneMor has not provided a reason or provided any policy explaining why Black employees were allegedly restricted from using on-site bathroom access. They have 21 days after being served with the lawsuit to file a response in court.
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