After several months of being subjected to racist remarks and discrimination, an Africa-American Tennessee worker released phone recordings that revealed his supervisor threatening to hang him for drinking water out of a "white people" only fountain.

Untonia Harris, an Atkinson Cotton Warehouse employee in Memphis, recorded another conversation between the two in which Harris asked to use the microwave but his supervisor responded that it's for white people only, CNN reported.

"I need to put a sign here that says, 'White people only,'" the supervisor said.

During the water fountain exchange, Harris told his supervisor to post the sign and then asked what would happen if he was caught drinking from the fountain.

"Put your sign on the wall then, because I am fitting to drink it," Harris said. "What they do when they catch me drinking your water?"

"That's when we hang you," the voice replied.

Harris spoke with WREG, a CNN affiliate, and said he along with other co-workers have been treated discriminately. The African American workers were repeatedly told not to use certain equipment that was strictly meant for white people.

"Telling me, 'Black man, don't get on this white man's life,'" Harris said.

The recordings also reveal the supervisor supporting the Jim Crow laws of the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries when numerous states enforced racial segregation between white citizens and people of color.

"Back then, nobody thought anything about it," the supervisor said in the audio. "Now, everybody is made to ... think it's bad."

E.W. Atkinson, the company's owner, told CNN that he was stunned to hear the recordings and insisted that he didn't know of the racism. He also added that 90 percent of his employees are black.

"It's crazy that anybody would think to talk like that nowadays. It makes no sense whatsoever. You can't even comprehend it," Atkinson said, adding, "If I heard it, I would have stopped it immediately."

Marrio Mangrum, another African American employee at the cotton factory, filed a federal complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after being laid off on Jan. 21. He filed the complaint nine days after his departure and cited several occurrences of discrimination.

"He would be like, 'You need to think like a white man,'" Mangrum told WREG.