A black Queens principal who “thinks he is white” forced a black administrator into retirement so he could replace her, she claims in a lawsuit.
Rosemarie Appleton, 65, said life at Frederick Douglass Academy VI High School in Far Rockaway, where she’d been assistant principal since 2008, became hell after fellow administrators began “belittling, shouting and demeaning [her] in front of her peers” and constantly asking when she planned to retire.
Principal Charles Ogundimu, whom Appleton describes in her Manhattan Supreme Court papers as “a person of color who ‘thinks he is white,’” excluded her from meetings, took her office away and had her work in a storage closet, and made sure she was given “physically challenging responsibilities” after she was injured on the job, she charges.
The goal was to replace Appleton, a black woman, with a white employee, she charges in a lawsuit against the city, the Education Department and Ogundimu.
She claims the principal “forced” her to submit a letter of resignation.