Two Black elementary school students in an Oklahoma community were removed from their classrooms last week for wearing “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts and were then forced by administrators to spend the rest of the day in the front office until school was over, according to reports.
The incidents occurred at Charles Evans Elementary and Will Rogers Elementary schools and involved two brothers, ages 8 and 5.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma called the discipline measures a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.
Both schools are in the Ardmore City Schools District, where Superintendent Kim Holland reportedly told the boys’ mother, Jordan Herbert, that politics would “not be allowed.”
The controversy began April 30 when 8-year-old Bentlee Herbert, a third-grader, first showed up at Charles Evans Elementary wearing a BLM shirt.
Denise Brunk, the principal there, told the boy he couldn’t wear the shirt but allowed him to finish the school day after instructing him to turn the shirt inside out for the rest of the day, which he did, the mother said.
The following Monday, Bentlee’s mother came to the school to confront Brunk over the dress code, asking what policy her son had violated, but Brunk immediately referred her to Holland, the superintendent.
In a conversation later that day, Holland “told me when the George Floyd case blew up that politics will not be allowed at school,” Herbert said. “I told him, once again, a ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-shirt is not politics.”
Then on Tuesday, Bentlee and his 5-year-old brother Rodney Herbert went to their respective schools in matching T-shirts with the words “Black Lives Matter” and an image of a clenched fist on the front.
Later that morning, officials at Will Rogers Elementary, where Rodney is a kindergartner, called the mother saying she needed to bring her son a different shirt to wear or allow the school provide one for him. She didn’t, and Rodney was forced to sit in the front office for the rest of the day because he did not change shirts, Herbert said.
The same also happened to Bentlee the same day at his school, where he missed recess and lunch with his peers as a result.
The school district has not responded to emails or phone calls seeking comment, according to The New York Times.
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