EXCLUSIVE: New Orleans-Area Eighth Grader Expelled For Defending Confederate Flag
Kari Donovan
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UPDATE: Morehouse Parish School District superintendent Hazel Sellers confirmed that Amanda Jennings’ daughter was brought to an expulsion hearing for “treating an authority with disrespect and willful disobedience.” Sellers said that Beekman Charter School, which makes its own rules independent of the school district, “re-admitted (Jennings’ daughter) on a probationary basis” to an alternative school known as the “Fresh Start” program.
A charter school in Louisiana has expelled an eighth-grade student for walking out of class in protest of a liberal history lesson on the Confederate flag, according to the girl’s outraged mother.
Amanda Jennings told Big League Politics that her daughter has been expelled from Beekman Charter School in Bastrop, Louisiana for the rest of the school year for defending the Confederate flag. Bastrop is located about four and a half hours north of New Orleans.
“I feel like my Heritage is constantly under attack,” Ms. Jennings said. “I am a minority here in this school district. I am white, but it is not my friends or community that I have a problem with.”
Her daughter is 13 and in 8th grade at Beekman Charter school, and had a History lesson on segregation during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. On the third day of the lesson, her daughter was being taught that the Confederate Flag was a symbol of hate, and that is when her daughter walked out in protest, saying that flag is a symbol of her ancestry and they were not racists.
According to Amanda Jennings, her daughter was expelled for the remainder of the year.
According to Jennings, at the expulsion hearing on Wednesday, March 18, she was not allowed to present any evidence on her daughter’s behalf.
The principal Roy McCoy, has denied Amanda the opportunity to file a new complaint at the School. When reached for comment, Principal McCoy said he would make no comment about “confidential” information, he did warn us to not divulge any confidential information ourselves. When asked what would be confidential about this story, he said “You will have to decide that for yourself”.
A new grievance will be filed at Department of Education.
Jennings is a “Monument Defender” in New Orleans. She had been in NOLA on and off for three weeks defending the Confederate Monuments. She saw many people attacked by Antifa groups during that time and she feels that the protesters were not local protesters. She feels they were from New York, and they were paid agitators. She said they were especially violent to the black citizens who were there to defend the monuments, which was upsetting to her. Amanda , talking about her heritage, feels a sense of protecting her friends. She says she has many black friends. Further, her Confederate ancestors built schools for blacks, after the war, and she is proud of that.
“We all get along here for the most part. I can go into black churches with my Confederate gear on and no one gets upset. We help each other here”, Amanda told BLP. “It is the Government , through groups like Hillary Clinton’s Southern Poverty Law Center, or Obama’s Community Organizing, and our elected government who stirs the people up over the Confederate Monuments.”
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