Black employees at the Trump Casino in Atlantic City were routinely kept out of sight whenever the real estate mogul entered the building, says one former employee.
A New Yorker magazine article about Atlantic City contained the story of a former Trump Casino worker about the way he and other employees of color were treated on the job when "the boss" was around.
"I met a bus driver named Kip Brown, who worked the Port Authority route, up and back each morning, for Academy Bus Lines. He had been at Academy for fifteen years and was No. 3 in seniority, out of seventy drivers in the region," said writer Nick Paumgarten.
"Brown also used to work in the casinos, at the Showboat, bussing tables, and at Trump’s Castle, stripping and waxing floors," he continued.
Brown said, "When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back."
Trump operated multiple businesses during Atlantic City's renaissance in the 1980s and 90s until one by one they went bankrupt or were sold off to other companies.
“I made a lot of money in Atlantic City,” he said during the GOP primary's first debate. “And I’m very proud of it."
The once-glamorous tourist city is now in decline and now still struggling to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“Sandy: that was the beginning of the fall of Atlantic City,” Brown told Paumgartner. The rise in property taxes now means that the value of Brown's house is less than the value of his mortgage.
“If I could get out of my house, I would. I don’t want to live in Atlantic City, to be honest with you,” he said.
[Hat-tip to Mother Jones]
