By Len Shindel, Baltimore Post-Examiner
A Brooklyn, N.Y. native, Palmer landed a job at Starbucks while in college in Hicksville, N.Y. “There weren’t many blacks in the town,” says Palmer. “I was hired by an assistant manager. Later, the white store manager came up to me and the first thing she said was, ‘Who hired you?’ Then I trained a white girl to get the promotion I should have gotten.”
Palmer, now a Baltimore-based organizer with UNITE HERE, a national union representing hotel and restaurant workers, was at Coppin State to help launch the Baltimore Black Worker Center, an organizing effort to empower black workers, raise their wages, benefits, respect on the job and challenge the kinds of bias Palmer experienced in her youth.