Former NBA center Joe Barry Carroll calls it “this foolishness,” the discriminating treatment he says he received at the Tavern at Phipps, a popular Buckhead restaurant, one August night in 2006.
When Carroll and a lawyer-friend refused management’s requests to give up their seats at the bar to two white women, they were escorted out by security.
In 2008, Carroll and Joseph Shaw filed a lawsuit against the Tavern.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that the case should go to trial. While U.S. Magistrate Janet King found there was no direct evidence of racial discrimination, she did find enough circumstantial evidence to let a jury decide whether racial animosity was the Tavern’s motivation to remove Carroll and Shaw — “the only two black people in the restaurant,” Carroll says — from the premises.
Back in 2008, restaurant owner Greg Greenbaum said, “I don’t feel we’ve done anything wrong. We don’t discriminate.”
The top pick in the 1980 NBA draft, Carroll, 51, starred for Purdue University and a number of NBA teams. He talked recently about getting his day in court:
Q: Are you shocked this even happened?
A: I think we’re all a little sad about it. Disappointed. As [civil-rights leader] C.T. Vivian said when I reported this to him, “Have we returned to this?”
Q: Did you know you were going to take some legal action right away?
A: We tried to have a conversation with the owners, and they are pretty confident in their behavior. So there was no other choice than to go to a federal court and have them render some type of judgment based on the facts.
Q: You’ve been living in Atlanta for 20 years. You’ve seen the city’s racial progress.
A: It was well on its way when I got here. Atlanta is a great place. I mean, I came here immediately after I retired from basketball and it’s been just a great story for me.
Q: What drew you to live here?
A: I love the culture. I love the arts. I love the community. I’m from the South. I’m from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. So a lot of the South makes sense to me. I came here during the [National] Black Arts Festival back in 1990 and went to all the events and saw friends and met new ones and decided this would be a great place to start.
Q: Where did you move to?
A: I’ve lived in Buckhead. I’ve lived in Marietta. Downtown Atlanta. I’m living in southwest Atlanta now for 15 years.
Q: What line of work are you in now?
A: I’m an investment adviser. I manage portfolios of publicly traded assets for high-net-worth families.
Q: I’ve seen you at the theater often. Do you make art as well?
A: No. Or none that I would display to anyone [laughs]!
Q: How often do you get out for that?
A: Art? Oh, I need it, all the time. Hammonds House. High Museum. There’s a variety of great galleries all over town. Just about anything you desire you can find here in Atlanta. You may choose to go to New York or San Francisco or Paris or London, but you don’t have to because it’s all right here.
Q: Have you gotten much feedback since the lawsuit has been in the press?
A: What I get mostly are people being encouraging. People of color go through this quite frequently. It’s something that breaks our heart, quite frankly, because we go to the right schools, we do the right things, we have the proper bank accounts. And then you go out and you have to deal with this type of foolishness. It’s just something we all wish would go away. But unfortunately it has not gone away.
Q: Do you have any feeling of how the case is going to go?
A: I don’t know. I just knew that it was necessary. This came to me. This was not something I chose. This came to me, and I just feel a sense of responsibility to take it to its conclusion, whatever it is. I’m confident in my position, I’ll say that.
Q: What would be a satisfactory result for you?
A: We have an opportunity to build some case law that provides a bit of justice for other people in this situation, because people are no longer blatant in their behavior. They have all these sophisticated techniques that they will use to do what they could not achieve in a very vulgar and blatant way.
Q: This is costing you a lot in legal bills?
A: It is. It’s very expensive and very time-consuming. And I said early on that whatever the [court] proceeds were, they would pay forward for the next person who has to deal with this foolishness. They will be donated to nonprofit activity, for other people who have this same issue but won’t have these incredible legal bills that I’m paying.
Q: Is there an amount you’re suing them for?
A: No, it’s to the discretion of the court, and the jury. What I wanted to do was dispel the notion that there was some financial gain for me in this. I have a career. I have a whole lot of ways to earn my keep. This would not be the choice I would make to earn money.
Q: Has this soured you on the city at all?
A: No, absolutely not. It’s just something I have to work through. It’s not something I would have chosen, but now that it’s here I have to deal with it. One day it will be all done and, you know, life goes on.
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