While Jesse Jackson was leading a march in Jena, Louisiana in defense of six black high school students who beat a white student unconscious, teachers at a lab school run by historically black Grambling University decided their kindergartners and first graders should protest too. Teachers supplied signs, chains and a noose, which was put around the neck of a little girl held up by her grandmother, an aide. That’s right, they staged a make-believe lynching.
Gramblinite reporter Justin LaGrande wrote:
“Kindergarten and first-grade students at Alma J. Brown Elementary will always remember the day they marched for equality. The children marched in protest of the imprisonment of Mychal Bell, and the seemingly racial bias shown toward blacks in a small Louisiana town.”
Teachers told the children about the Jena Six and about racism. Then the children marched around the playground.
The Gramblinite’s Web site Friday included a comment from a woman who identified herself as Irene Booker. She wrote:
“Yes, it was a rope around the little girl’s neck. It was a (safe) demonstration as to what the rope symbolized to blacks. This was my granddaughter and she along with so many of the other students did not understand the intimidation of the noose. I held her in my arms and she knows that I would not harm her or put her life in danger. In order to understand racism one must experience it to make the connection.”
So the five- and six-year-olds learned it’s safe to put your head in a noose. Grandma says so! Hey, let’s play the rope game at home!
Three white students were suspended from Jena High School for hanging nooses from a campus tree three months before six black students attacked a boy; the victim was not involved with the noose incident. Initially, the alleged attackers were charged with attempted murder, leading to accusations of racism.
The Grambling administration first response to the protest story was to order the photos of the girl in the noose off the student newspaper’s web site. Here are photos of the march that remain. The administration now has announced there will be sanctions of some kind against five teachers.
They need to check their dictionaries – there was a lynching – 6 against one to protest an offense.
Cowardly swine cloaking their cowardly actions in the hood of virtue. Perhaps the time is past for racist institutions like Grambling.
Almost worst than learning that nooses are safe is the unquestioned explanation that morality must be taught by personal experience.
It raises the question of how they plan on teaching about murder, kidnapping, and rape to children.
Much of the upper and middle class still believe that there are some underlying principles that can be taught without physically recreating every unjust act.
The Fox article quotes a faculty member from Southern U. in Baton Rouge, another HBCU. I can only imagine that there was quite a bit of uproar within the black community itself over this incident.
Long ago I recall reading that mock executions of adults are considered to be psychological torture and abuse. It could only be worse for children.
You’re right, Myrtle. Many black bloggers (and others) are furious about the pretend lynching.
Self indulgence and self pity of the worst kind.
Excuse me, but as a “Rich White Guy” I understand Black History a lot better than some of these pathetic people from Grambling. I don’t need a noose around my neck to understand the intimidation value.
And likely these folks just don’t want to know – Blacks were not the exclusive victims of lynchings.
This is a lot like the behavior of Palestinians teaching their children to hate Jews – and using the resources of the school to do their own political work.
I find it all foolish… the 3 nooses from the tree… the beating that ensued and the mock demonstration. I gather the children in the mock demonstration had the most to lose… their innocence.
You have to love the product that ed schools are putting out these days…
Next time it will be elementary students waving around cardboard AK-47’s and burning the American flag. Wait, that’s probably already happened in some schools…