Parents Consider Transferring Daughter from Catholic School After Black History Month Lesson Allegedly Divides Students By Race
‘Black Children Were Chosen to be Slaves’: Parents Consider Transferring Daughter from Catholic School After Black History Month Lesson Allegedly Divides Students By Race
The St. Louis Archdiocese has issued a statement clarifying a Black History Month lesson considered offensive to African-American families. The parents say their children were selected by race to play roles and act out the lyrics of a Negro spiritual. Black students were allegedly asked to play runaway slaves and white children were selected to play abolitionists.
Faith Shelton, a third-grade student at the All Saints Academy at the St. Rose Philippine Duchesne campus in Florissant, Missouri, was attending music class, when the teacher decided to teach about the lyrics of the song “Follow the Drinking Gourd” earlier this month, KMOV-TV reports.
The young girl shared the lesson with her family, and from their response she quickly realized something was not right.
Her father, Micah Shelton, said he learned from his daughter, “The Black children were chosen to be slaves and the white students were chosen to be the ones that freed them. To know that this type of thing is going on in the school especially today it’s very frustrating and disappointing,” KMOV reported.
He added that his daughter “wasn’t really aware of the severity of what she was just taught and exposed to.”
“I just thought we were playing a normal game,” said Faith. “The teachers are pretty nice but sometimes they can act ridiculous.”
The archdiocese confirms the song, which relates to slaves escaping to freedom during the Underground Railroad, was intentionally played in class, but denies that students were singled out according to race for the exercise.
Owen M. Dabek, the principal of…
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