“What they can do is say, “We’re not going to do this anymore. It is mind-boggling to me that no one will say that.”

Dr. Corrie Davis is outraged that the principal at Big Shanty Elementary School in Kennesaw, Ga., doesn’t have a problem with students reenacting slavery on the school’s “Civil War Day.” Students were encouraged to dress up as historically-accurate characters and, because her son is Black, Davis’s son was treated like a slave. Teachers defend the exercise saying that it teaches the students empathy. Davis says that the experience was traumatizing.

A Traumatizing Experience

In a now-viral Facebook video, Davis shared her reactions to the meeting she had with school officials. She expressed her frustrations with the notion that although costumes were optional, students and parents were urged to make them as realistic as possible. Therefore, it was assumed that Black children would be slaves and White children would be slave masters. Her son did not dress up, but that didn’t stop a White child from saying to him, “You are my slave.”

“What I want them to understand is the pain it caused my son,” Davis told the Houston Chronicle. “This is bringing them back to a time when people were murdered, when people died, when people owned people.”

https://www.facebook.com/corrie.davis1/posts/1638673352863440

School Officials Are In Favor Of The Exercise

In the meeting attended by Davis and her son’s father who had written a letter to the school, Davis was generally ignored by the principal. The doting mother is a professor at Kennesaw State University who teaches early childhood education, research, and diversity. She isn’t just some angry Black woman. Davis can offer real solutions that will meet state curriculum requirements without harming children emotionally and psychologically. The school didn’t want her input. For them, it was all about the attire as opposed to the effect of the exercise.

“No student was required to dress in period attire and any student that did was not instructed, nor required, to dress in any specific attire,” school spokesman John Stratford said in a statement.

Not On Her Watch

But that’s just not good enough for Corrie Davis. The principal told her that the lesson would be taught at a lower grade level starting next school year, but would not promise that the role play would be taken out of the lesson. The area superintendent, however, assures her that the costuming will be discontinued and that the principal would be reprimanded.

Davis says she will fight to make sure that no other child has to suffer the same hurt and humiliation that her son did. She will be an example to her son of how to fight racial injustice.

“One thing he will see is his mom out here telling people how wrong this is,” Davis told WGCL-TV. “He’ll see that I’m not sitting in the background.”

https://youtu.be/95P2etYpbfs