Battle lines at Langston Hughes center

The African-American artistic director of the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center made racially charged remarks about and to her Asian-American colleagues and used her political ties to the Seattle mayor's office to get away with it — hanging on to her job even as supervisors grew increasingly concerned about her behavior, according to a workplace assessment.

An independent consultant hired by the Parks and Recreation Department, which operates Langston Hughes, concluded that Jacqueline Moscou may have been hired in 2001 as the center's first artistic director over higher-ranked candidates because of her connections to the mayor's office.

Two years later, in the midst of a budget cut, Moscou kept her job, again because her bosses said the mayor's office had intervened, according to the assessment, obtained by The Times under the state's open records law.

Moscou told the consultant: "When Parks tried to write me out of the budget, the mayor wouldn't stand for it. The mayor said: 'She's the most prominent African-American we have, so we can't let her go.' "

Parks Department officials removed Moscou from the building in October, two months after the workplace assessment was completed, and placed her on paid administrative leave.

Her removal prompted a public outcry from her many supporters, who praised her talent and said she is key to the future of Langston Hughes, an important Central Area institution that has given rise to generations of African-American talent.

The center's stated mission is to foster artistic expression for African Americans and other communities of color. But the workplace report said Moscou's interpretation of the mission is that the center was created to serve the black community, that it has always been for and about "black artists and black culture" and that it "shouldn't keep trying to be all things to all people."

She was hired, she told the consultant, to carry out that mission, and the department's failure to educate staff toward that goal is the reason for its dysfunction.

Before Moscou's dismissal, complaints about her from the staff had been mounting, prompting the Parks Department last spring to hire private consultant Mary L. Sebek to assess the workplace.

Sebek's 22-page report capped what appears to have been years of acrimony between Moscou and the Langston Hughes staff, including her immediate supervisor, managing director Manuel Cawaling.

Sebek concludes that while the Parks Department knew about Moscou's "inappropriate race-based behavior, they did nothing to stop it, reinforcing the perception that (Moscou) was untouchable because of her ties to the mayor's office."

Moscou's husband is a former state Democratic Party chair and deputy chief of staff under former mayor Norm Rice.

A spokesman for Mayor Greg Nickels' office said implications that it intervened to hire and keep Moscou are "categorically false. It's inappropriate to suggest that type of involvement by this office," spokesman Marty McOmber said.

He said that when the mayor's office saw the workplace assessment, it asked the city attorney and the Parks Department to investigate.

Parks Superintendent Tim Gallagher said that investigation should be completed within weeks. Moscou remains on leave pending its outcome.

Moscou's attorneys said Tuesday they could not comment on the findings of the workplace assessment.

Moscou told the consultant that she believed the workplace assessment was in retaliation for her criticism of a department decision to keep a contract worker suspected of child rape. He was later convicted.

Widely differing views

As part of her workplace assessment, Sebek interviewed 16 people, including current and former staffers — African-Americans, Asian-Americans and whites.

In their interviews, staffers described Moscou as "often arrogant, abusive, selfish, manipulative, inconsistent, uncooperative, rude, racially biased, condescending, two-faced, unsupportive and controlling."

Moscou, on the other hand, said she believed she was perceived as "funny, focused, intense, specific, knowledgeable, respectful, appreciative of talent and honest."

The workplace assessment also said that Moscou's interpretation of the center's mission differed significantly from that of other staffers, who said the center has a tradition of providing opportunities for those of all incomes, ages, races and arts experience and interest.

And as the neighborhood has changed, staffers said, an even broader range of cultural groups, including whites, Asians and new immigrants, has joined Langston Hughes. According to the workplace assessment, Moscou told the consultant: "The reality is ... the African-American community is under attack by Koreans, African immigrants and misogynists and it is not strong enough to stand on its own, so I have to help it... "

Roots of trouble

The center's current troubles date back to at least 2002, when the positions of managing director and artistic director were created after a reorganization.

The first managing director, Adrienne Caver-Hall, an African-American who is still with the Parks Department, told the consultant that Cawaling and Moscou were both finalists for the artistic director job, with Cawaling in the lead because Moscou lacked necessary administrative skills.

Caver-Hall told the consultant she was preparing to hire Cawaling but before Parks could sign off on it, a top department director told her to "destroy the paperwork and create a memo justifying hiring" Moscou instead.

She told the consultant she "understood the mayor's office had intervened and was forcing this hire."

The report says others within the Parks Department had that understanding.

Cawaling, an Asian-American, was hired as the center's first education director in 2003 and told the consultant that he later heard grumbling in the black community questioning why the Parks Department couldn't find a black person for the job.

He said when he told Moscou about it, she lectured him for 45 minutes about why the black community had every right to be upset and made statements that "Asians got their civil rights on the backs of African-Americans."

In 2004, Caver-Hall quit after clashing with Moscou. Cawaling again competed with Moscou for the managing director position and got it, becoming Moscou's boss.

That same year, the center hired an Asian-American woman to run its education programs.

The woman told the consultant that Moscou took her out for coffee and told her that she and the black community were disappointed that a black person didn't get the job.

Moscou told the consultant that she believes Langston Hughes "should focus toward African Americans{$326} (and) ... if we do our work, in 10 years the building staff won't look like it does now. The building staff used to be all black, except for one person."

Staff complaints ranged from Moscou's bad-mouthing programs she was not involved in to undermining the center's ability to diversify its programs by publicly portraying the center as exclusively black.

The staff also told the consultant that there were some in the arts community who would not work on center productions if Moscou was involved.

The University of Washington's Ethnic Cultural Theater, for example, filed a formal complaint after a co-production with Langston Hughes.

The theater manager cited four pages of inappropriate behavior by Moscou, from her asking theater staff and designers to get her dinner and drive her places to canceling a show when the audience was already seated.

Nothing ever came of the complaint, according to the assessment.

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com