Children's rhyme leads to firing over alleged racial harassment BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, June 29th 2008, 11:21 PM
Eenie, meenie, minie, moe - Here's Donald Cross' tale of woe.
The 65-year-old drug counselor was fired by a Long Island town this month after he recited a children's rhyme and offended an African-American co-worker.
Cross said he was blindsided by the Town of Babylon's decision to can him for racially motivated harassment. He has filed a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights to win back the job he had held for 15 years.
"I am astounded and dumbfounded that I received such an overreaction to such a seemingly innocuous question," Cross said in the complaint.
Cross said the rhyme was running through his head last January when he encountered 71-year-old Kathleen Wood in the Babylon Town Hall annex.
"How did you learn 'Eenie, meenie, minie, moe?'" he asked her.
There are numerous variations of the ditty. But Wood apparently thought of the version with the line, "catch a n----r by the toe," according to court records.
"I heard it before and I know what was coming after, like I know what's always following it. ... I know the rhyme and I just didn't want to hear it," Wood testified at Cross' April disciplinary hearing.
Town attorney Paul Margiotta argued at the hearing that Cross should be fired, likening a white person using the rhyme to holding up a noose.
Cross has also filed a $10 million federal lawsuit alleging his civil rights were violated.
In 2004, an all-white Missouri jury threw out a black couple's suit against a Southwest Airlines flight attendant who said over the intercom, "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, pick a seat. We gotta go."
Poster Comment:
The man said "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" - nothing else....