Parents and students from Lubbock testified in Austin Monday with stories of racism in several local schools. They spoke at the Texas State Capitol in support of House Bill 4625.

HB 4625 proposed the implementation of a strategy that would prevent bullying on the basis of “the victim’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, color, national origin, sex, gender, religion, disability status…”

It also proposed training and staff development for teachers and administrators on the proposed strategy. The individuals who testified were Phyliss Gant, Mary Pegues, Tracy Kemp, Shardae McGaha and Trinity Hawkins.

Kemp said she moved to Lubbock from Michigan two years ago. She described her experience in Texas as “horrific.” Kemp said her son was the victim of identity-based bullying while he was a student at Laura Bush Middle School. She testified that her son was called the n-word within only a few months of starting school.

“I had to make a call to the FBI hotline, because that’s how bad it had gotten in our school district,” Kemp testified. Despite extensive local news coverage, Kemp said the school district did not publicly recognize that racial bullying occurred until it made national headlines.

Kemp and McGaha were among several other parents who took action against the Lubbock-Cooper Independent School District for the discrimination and harassment they said their children experienced. In April 2022, Kemp and McGaha’s children were both featured on an Instagram page called “LBMS_m0nkeys” which stood for “Laura Bush Middle School Monkeys.”

“I am not a monkey. I have a name,” Trinity Hawkins, a student at the Slaton Independent School District, testified. Hawkins said she was expected to quietly deal with the racism and identity-based bullying and got in trouble when she stood up for herself. Hawkins testified that is not fair for younger kids to deal with racism in schools.

“It mentally drains you,” Hawkins said. “It hinders you from trying to learn.”

Several parents in Lubbock made waves in 2022 about what they called “racial discrimination.” Parents claimed their children were called racial slurs and whipping sounds were played on smart phones as they walked in the halls.

“We have a pandemic in Lubbock, Texas, of racism. That has been documented for almost two years. With no resolution,” said Phyllis Gant, Lubbock NAACP legal redress chair.

If passed, the law would take effect at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year.

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It’s estimated that a quarter of American students have been bullied for how they identify - like for their race, religion or gender.

Bills filed in both the Texas House and Senate are trying to prevent identity-based bullying through education. The bills would also create a formal process for school districts to follow when this kind of bullying happens.

“We hear extremely varying stories and accounts of how schools document these instances,” said Paige Duggins Clay, the chief legal analyst for the Intercultural Development Research Association, a nonprofit group advocating for the bills. “This is really critical, because what may start out as relatively low-level bullying, ultimately can, and in fact often does, escalate into serious civil rights concerns.”

That’s what happened in Lubbock-Cooper ISD, where Black students have reported being bullied for their race. The harassment has included racial slurs that have, at times, led to physical fights. Black students also faced cyberbullying.

Unsatisfied with how the school district handled the issue, parents filed a federal civil rights complaint with the Department of Education last year.

This situation, and others across the state, informed the filed bills that seek to standardize a school district’s response to reports of bullying.

The proposed framework would require district staff to report bullying to an appropriate administrator. Then, parents of both the student engaged in bullying and the one being bullied would be notified. Students and families would be offered resources as the district conducts an investigation. The proposal also states that the bullied victim should not face disciplinary action for engaging in self-defense.

The bills are supported by the Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus and the Texas Legislative Black Caucus.

“With incidents of bullying, harassment and hate crimes on the rise in Texas, it is time to provide our schools and educators with the necessary tools needed to keep our students and schools safe,” Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Fort Bend, said in a statement. ”Our schools need to be equipped with clear guidelines on how to address, document and investigate identity-based bullying reports.”

Allegations of in-school racist bullying have come from across the state. A recent report by the Charles Butt Foundation found that a majority of parents of color think students face a risk of discrimination based on their race or ethnicity.

Education has been a contentious topic in recent legislative sessions led by conservative efforts. In 2021, the focus was on how race-related subjects are taught in school. This year, Senate Bill 8 bars lessons, programs, or guidance on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Still, Duggins Clay said this is a student safety issue that should not be partisan.

“We think it's really critical that policymakers stand up and say that this is not acceptable,” she said. “Every kid deserves to feel safe and supported in school, regardless of who they are, what their ancestry is or what they look like.”

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Lubbock-area parents are escalating their fight against racism in two local school districts, calling on the districts to do more to combat bullying and discrimination and detailing next steps in their ongoing battle to end bigotry in South Plains schools.

At a series of gatherings Thursday, parents and civil rights leaders expressed their frustration with Lubbock-Cooper and Slaton independent school districts after the school boards last week both adopted resolutions decrying racism and explaining steps the schools say they have taken to fight discrimination on their campuses. The parents said the districts' statements were too little, too late, with one LCISD mother calling them blatant lies.

Rev. Todd Yeary, who serves as a pastor and civil rights attorney in Baltimore, Maryland, spoke at a news conference Thursday hosted by the Lubbock NAACP and the Intercultural Development Research Association. He said the resolutions are "rhetorical flourishes on cheap paper, coordinated on the same day, almost like somebody copied off of someone else's paper and didn't do a good job."

"If we were to call this what this is, it is a poor attempt to avoid accountability," Yeary said.

"The fact that (the Lubbock-Cooper school board) blatantly lied and said that there were no complaints this school year was really disheartening," Tracy Kemp, who says her son has experienced racial bullying, said at the news conference. "I really put faith in the school board that they would do the right thing, and that lets me know that they made statements and comments just to save face."

Just hours after the news conference at Mae Simmons Community Center and another rally that preceded it at Patterson Library, many of the same parents and activists spoke at a Slaton ISD Board of Trustees meeting where they demanded accountability.

"The things (Slaton ISD has) done mentally, physically, emotionally — y'all broke my children. I need some damn accountability," JaQuatta Manahan said at the board meeting. "This isn’t a protest. This is a cry for help. This is a cry for change. We aren't promoting violence. We are asking simply for accountability."

Manahan, a Slaton parent, says her daughter Autumn was unfairly disciplined for a fight that resulted from daily racial harassment from other students at Slaton High including the use of racial slurs. Manahan says district administration did nothing to stop the bullying and is now calling for Superintendent Jim Andrus' termination.

"I asked you to put on your big boy drawers, and sit at the table and have a conversation," Manahan said. "This is y'all's leader and he continues to lie," she said of Andrus.

Slaton ISD abruptly announced Monday school would be canceled on Thursday and Friday in addition to the previously scheduled Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday the following Monday. Andrus told local media the dismissal was in celebration of MLK Day, but also in response to Thursday's gatherings and a social media threat.

"Individuals who are not yet known to us (but appear to be from out of town) have posted on TikTok that the high school should be shot up," Andrus said in an email to parents.

Andrus said SISD has involved the FBI in investigation of the threat.

"I've never seen a school district have the gumption to claim an affinity with Dr. King's national holiday as a false justification to give cover to their cowardice and blame it on the people," Yeary said in response at Thursday's news conference.

The Lubbock-Cooper and Slaton school districts' resolutions and activists' strengthened push for accountability come amid a barrage of racism complaints against the two districts beginning in April and most recently making national headlines in December, the Avalanche-Journal previously reported.

Allegations of racism in LCISD surfaced in late April when an Instagram account bearing the district’s LCP logo and images of Black students from Laura Bush Middle School with accompanying racist text was discovered.

Following the Instagram incident, the 100 Black Men of West Texas, a local advocacy group, released a statement asserting LCISD harbored a "culture of racial intolerance, ignorance, racial bullying, and bigotry that the school administration seems to tacitly allow and ignore." The district responded, saying in part that "all racist behaviors, statements and actions are deplorable and have no place in our schools" and denying The 100’s claim that racism has been "swept under the rug," the A-J reported at the time.

Tensions have escalated recently with federal complaints and subsequent state and national news reports in December highlighting the alleged racism within the two districts. Speakers at a Dec. 12 school board meeting said LCISD has failed to take action to curb racism in the district, which is about 3% Black.

IDRA and Lubbock NAACP leaders Thursday proposed a series of concrete measures they request Lubbock-Cooper ISD and Slaton ISD take to resolve the alleged racial discrimination problems on their campuses.

The measures include revising the districts' anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, anti-bullying policies and student codes of conduct, providing additional training to staff and instruction to students, creating a student committee and district working group to prevent harassment, establishing a process to review disciplinary actions against Black students and publishing an annual report summarizing instances of race-based bullying and harassment in the districts.

In addition to proposing measures intended to bring change, several Lubbock County parents — including Lubbock-Cooper moms Tracy Kemp and Shardae McGaha and Slaton aunt Mary Pegues — are joining together to create Parents Against Racism, a pact of parents partnering to promote fair treatment in schools. Kemp said the group will be available for anyone who needs help or support in battling bullying and discrimination in education.

"If you have an issue, if you have a complaint, if your child is being discriminated (against), we want to help you. It doesn't matter what color your child is or how they identify or what you believe in," Kemp said. "We believe that all children deserve the right to be at school and to be treated fairly, and we just hope that our experience and our struggle was the sacrifice so that no other child should feel this way."

Lubbock-Cooper and Slaton families, in partnership with the Lubbock NAACP and IDRA, have filed formal complaints with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights detailing the racism allegations against the two school districts. David Henderson, one of the attorneys who authored the federal complaints on behalf of the families, said parents are now just waiting for the Office of Civil Rights to commence its investigation.

"I know they've received what we've written to them, and I know they've got it on their desk, but we're waiting for them to come in and actually start doing an investigation," Henderson said. He added he's also waiting for "the rest" of the response from Lubbock-Cooper and Slaton, noting the resolutions the school boards adopted do not go far enough.

"To Lubbock-Cooper, to Slaton: If I believe that everything you're saying is true, it took you eight months and 23 days to even begin to respond to claims of race discrimination that were brought to your attention. That's longer than a football season," Henderson said. "The fact that you responded to it lets me know that you realize you need to respond. We're waiting for the rest of your response."

"It's hard to think about studying when people are calling you a n----- at school," he added.

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Weeks after a federal civil rights complaint was filed against Lubbock-Cooper ISD for inaction on racist bullying, the district’s board of trustees passed a resolution condemning racism during a special meeting Thursday.

Tracy Kemp is a mother involved in the filing and was excited to see the bullying was finally being addressed — nearly nine months after she brought up her initial complaint to the district.

“I’m really disappointed that it took national media coverage, bad press and angry parents for this,” Kemp said on Thursday.

The complaint filed by parents against the district alleges their children have faced daily harassment and violent bullying from peers at Laura Bush Middle School in Lubbock. Black students were subjected to derogatory language and racial slurs both online and in person, as well as the sounds of cracking whips or monkey noises as the students walked down the halls, according to the filing.

The harassment eventually became violent. Kemp’s 15-year-old son was a target of assaults by his classmates. In response, she and other parents brought the evidence to school administrators and created a QR code for students to quickly report bullying.

Still, parents say school officials would not take action to end the bullying or punish the students doing it, despite their “zero tolerance” stance. The Black students involved in the fights were punished.

Zniyah Lewis was bullied while attending the middle school last year and is now a freshman at Lubbock-Cooper High School. At the crowded board meeting on Thursday, she asked the board what their definition of zero tolerance was, but her question was met with silence.

The board was then asked by Phyllis Gant, a member of the Lubbock NAACP, if they could answer her.

“We can, we do not have to,” answered Paul Ehlers, president of the board. “We’ll let the statement stand for itself.”

Milton Lee, the president of the Lubbock NAACP, emphasized to the board that they can still fix the problem.

“This is not such a big issue that it can’t be solved,” Lee said. “You already have the blueprint, which is the zero tolerance. All we have to do is get together and say ‘We’re going to follow this, no matter who it may be.’”

Vice President Daniel Castro read the multipage resolution, most of which was going over the district’s version of the events from the past year. This includes their stance that Superintendent Keith Bryant met with the families involved and that no additional racially motivated incidents have been reported to the district.

“Lies,” Kemp said in response to both.

Castro continued reading the resolution, which stated the board of trustees condemns all racially motivated behaviors, actions or speech. The resolution pledges to support all actions to end racism and discrimination among students.

“The Lubbock-Cooper Independent School Board of Trustees is committed to maintaining a safe, orderly learning environment for students of all races, cultures and ethnicities,” reads the resolution.

While the resolution passed, parents said after the meeting that it’s not enough and the district hasn’t tried to make meaningful changes.

“They haven’t spoken about anything coming to the table as far as trying to fix this issue,” said Shardae McGaha, Zniyah’s mother. “And we know for a fact that we’re not going to be able to fix this issue for our kids anytime soon. But we have other kids growing up that will be attending these schools so we just want to cut out the racism altogether.”

Kemp called it a publicity stunt.

“We want them to come in and save the day,” Kemp said. “I don’t know why it’s hard to sit down and talk to families.”

Zniyah was hopeful at the start of the meeting, but that mood diminished by the end of it. The 15-year-old says she doesn’t feel safe at school but knows she has to go back.

“It’s heartbreaking to know I have to go back and this will be repeated because that’s what happens,” Zniyah said.

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By Jayme Lozano from texastribune.org

Parents, full of anger and disbelief, have confronted school leaders in the Lubbock area over a series of racist and antisemitic incidents in several schools.

In total, four separate incidents have come to light in recent weeks.

Two episodes — both involving Black students targeted in constant bullying by their peers and inaction by school officials, parents say — have led to separate federal civil rights lawsuits.

At the heart of the two lawsuits is the pain parents say their children have endured as a result of months of constant and violent bullying — including an Instagram account that posted photos of Black students from a Lubbock middle school with racist captions, and racial discrimination by school officials against students at the high school in Slaton, about 17 miles south of Lubbock.

A third South Plains school district — Roosevelt ISD — had a parent file a federal complaint against them for racial discrimination by school officials. There, a mother took her daughter out of school after she claims school officials targeted her child for undue disciplinary actions.

Meanwhile, a threatening antisemitic petition was passed around by a student at another Lubbock middle school. Parents say they are disappointed the school hasn’t had a strong response.

On their own, these might seem like isolated incidents of school-age angst. However, racially driven and antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Texas. And now four different school districts in the South Plains are facing tensions emblematic of the widespread problem. Instead of addressing it directly, parents say school officials try to sweep the issues under the rug.

Lubbock-Cooper ISD — which includes Laura Bush Middle School, where the Instagram account was based — declined to comment on the federal lawsuit.

“Racism has no place at any school within Lubbock-Cooper ISD,” the district added in a statement. “It is not a reflection of our beliefs as a school and it completely contradicts the virtues we wish to instill in our students.”

Lubbock parents are grappling with sending their children to schools where they may not feel safe because of their skin color or religion, particularly with officials at the helm who parents no longer trust.

“They know that there’s a problem but they don’t want to do anything about it,” said Tracy Kemp, a mother of three kids in the Lubbock-Cooper district and a participant in the federal complaint. “They would rather us leave than to change.”

Black students make up 3% of Lubbock-Cooper’s student body. The complaint, which was a joint filing with the families, Intercultural Development Research Association and the Lubbock NAACP, alleges the school is known for its frequent, consistent and extreme discriminatory practices against its Black students.

The Lubbock-Cooper school district covers Southwest Lubbock, serving families on the farthest edges of Lubbock’s newest developed area and families from nearby communities.

The complaint details the near-daily harassment and bullying several Black students had to endure since last spring, which included being called racial slurs and hearing the sounds of cracking whips as they walked through the halls.

The complaint also alleges that the incidents — which lasted for months — would often lead to physical threats and acts of violence against Black students by their white peers. Kemp’s son was one of the students targeted in these assaults. Kemp thinks the attacks escalated because she was bringing attention to the matter. The school, she said, still hasn’t had a meaningful response in more than eight months.

“They have nothing to show for it because they’ve done nothing about it,” Kemp said. “They’ve put out damage control statements because we’ve gone to the press, but they’ve never come to us.”

Parents reported the hostile acts to school administration, but they say officials didn’t take action to end the harassment and would often punish the victims. Lubbock-Cooper ISD said it has responded to complaints by instituting more diversity training among teachers, administrators and students.

Similar incidents were reported in the complaint against Slaton High School, where there are about 20 Black students. In one instance, the lawsuit claims, a Black student faced unfair punishment for retaliating against a white student for repeatedly calling her racist slurs. In a statement to NBC News, Slaton Superintendent Jim Andrus said the district trains staff regularly on how to address bullying allegations.

At Hutchinson Middle School in Lubbock, a parent alleged a student asked peers to sign a sheet of paper after calling for violence against Jewish people, according to emails obtained by The Texas Tribune. The parent suggested not all students who signed understood what it was for and some students signed, with real and fake names.

Administrators determined there was not an imminent threat to students and did not send out an email informing the public, despite being asked to do so by a Jewish parent. The school district claimed sending an email out would be a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act because it could reveal the student’s identity.

Lubbock Rabbi Deborah Goldmann emailed the principal and superintendent about the incident. In emails obtained by the Tribune, Goldmann said the community learns the behavior is acceptable because there was no response.

Michael Stewart, the principal of Hutchinson Middle School, responded to her saying the school has addressed the behavior with the individual involved and students who signed and that they are developing lessons to address the cultural and religious backgrounds of students.

“It does seem that you are beating around the bush and uncomfortable addressing antisemitism,” Goldmann wrote back. “If they felt comfortable going around asking people to sign that paper, they are in an environment where other students feel the same level of comfort.”

Roosevelt ISD, 10 miles east of Lubbock, is also facing an official complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Kristen Arnold alleges that her daughter was being racially discriminated against by school officials and was falling behind in classes because of unjust punishments. In an effort to protect her daughter’s mental health, Arnold pulled her from Roosevelt High School just before her senior year. She is now doing a homeschool program to be able to graduate.

“They literally harassed her right out of high school,” Arnold told the Tribune. “She’s been struggling with depression and anxiety.”

According to emails obtained by the Tribune, Arnold shared her concerns and attempted to meet with Roosevelt Superintendent Dallas Grimes about the problem in May. In response, Grimes said they have heard her grievances and were aware of the report she was filing.

“Unless there is new information to educate me on, I’m not sure what the purpose of the meeting would be,” the email reads.

Arnold was intimidated by the response and withdrew her complaints, but refiled in June. The case is now pending at the federal department of education. In an email to the Tribune, Grimes said the district knew she withdrew her complaints but was unaware of the new filing.

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A civil rights complaint against Lubbock Cooper ISD alleging racist discrimination has been filed with the U.S. Department of Education.

Community advocates announced the move at the school district’s board of trustees meeting Monday night. Multiple speakers said the district has not properly addressed the allegations of rampant racism in its schools.

The complaint comes months after Black students at Laura Bush Middle School reported they experience almost daily racist bullying. The harassment has included racial slurs that have, at times, led to physical fights. Black students also faced online bullying last school year, when an Instagram account featured pictures of students with racist captions. The complaint alleges Black students also face harsher punishments.

Tracy Kemp is a Black mother with three kids in the Lubbock-Cooper school district. She said administrators have not done enough to address the concerns she has repeatedly brought to them.

“They have failed lots and lots of black and brown children because of their ignorance and negligence,” Kemp said Monday.

Paige Duggins-Clay, a lawyer with the Intercultural Development Research Association, explained that the Office of Civil Rights will next decide if the complaint has merit. If it’s decided that it does, they will open an investigation.

“And through that investigation,” Duggins-Clay said, “we’re really, really hopeful that there will be an opportunity to identify the problems and actually have some meaningful action to fix them.”

Superintendent Keith Bryant told “NBC Nightly News” that Lubbock-Cooper has new diversity training for students and teachers. He said there is no place for racism in the district.

The latest demographic data available shows Lubbock-Cooper’s student body is 3% Black, 39% Hispanic and 54% white. Demographics are similar at the campus level.

First reported by NBC News, a similar complaint was also filed Monday against Slaton ISD. It alleges a Black student who retaliated against a White student for repeatedly calling her racist slurs faced unfair punishment that affected her mental health.

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Students and families of the Lubbock-Cooper Independent School District and Slaton ISD, along with the Lubbock NAACP and the Intercultural Development Research Association filed civil right complaints against the school districts. The violation claims were submitted Monday to the US Department of Education.

According to Paige Duggins Clay, Chief Legal Analyst for non-profit civil rights organization IDRA, the complaints were for “Civil Rights alleging violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

In addition to the written complaints, some concerned residents attended a Monday evening Lubbock-Cooper ISD school meeting to speak during the time set aside for public comments.

Both complaints referenced a Disciplinary Alternative Educational Program where students had to change into an “orange jumpsuit” and were “forced to endure other students in DAEP hurling racial slurs on a daily basis.”

The Slaton ISD complaint stated that “a Black Jewish girl with a disability—on track to be valedictorian of her senior class—was later sent to DAEP for 45 days after being forced to defend herself against a white boy who repeatedly called her the “N word,” despite her and other students’ pleas for him to stop.” According to the complaint, Black students at Slaton High School were “daily subjected to their non-Black peers using the “N word” and other racial slurs, bullying, and harassment.”

The complaint said school employees responded to student complaints by “suggesting they should ignore the harassment, because “it’s just a word.””

In response to the complaint, Slaton ISD released a statement to EverythingLubbock.com.

Slaton Independent School District’s Board of Trustees and Administrators take very seriously the prevention of racial discrimination and racial harassment in the district. Slaton ISD has a zero tolerance for racism in any form and, once notified of such, take immediate action with discipline or increasing discipline to stop any such inappropriate actions. Likewise, Slaton ISD Trustees and Administrators take seriously the safety of all students, thoroughly investigating each incident with appropriate consequences. Slaton ISD is working diligently to prevent all forms of discrimination and harassment and will continue to do so.

JIM ANDRUS, SLATON ISD SUPERINTENDENT

A complaint against Lubbock-Cooper ISD said white students played “sounds of cracking whips” on their phones as Black Students walked through the halls of Laura Bush Middle School. The complaint also said Black students were subjected to racial slurs and told to “go pick cotton.”

Racial bullying and harassment led to physical fights and acts of violence against Black students, according to the complaint against Lubbock-Cooper ISD. The complaint said during some instances, white students followed Black students to bathrooms, extracurricular activities and even their homes. According to the complaint, despite “clear evidence” of racial harassment, “administrators only brought discipline against the Black students involved in fights.”

The complaint against Lubbock-Cooper ISD alleged that Assistant Principal Lance Lewis “directly asked one of the Black students if they ‘picked cotton’ after the student reported that white students told him to pick cotton.” On another occasion, the complaint said Lewis told a Black student that the school ‘already had to deal with these [N-word] situations this year.'”

The complaint also referenced a derogatory Instagram page that contained the LCP logo, as EverythingLubbock.com reported in April.

The Complainants are seeking “accountability” along with “measures to ensure that no child is forced to endure a racist learning environment in Lubbock again.”

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By Mike Hixenbaugh from nbcnews.com

The Black girl’s hands were shaking as she approached a white classmate in gym class.

“I told you,” Autumn Roberson-Manahan said, her voice quivering, “to stop using that word.”

Autumn, a 17-year-old senior at Slaton High School, said she’d asked the boy four days in a row to stop saying the N-word in class. And for four consecutive days, according to Autumn and a half-dozen other students later interviewed by the school principal, the boy had disregarded her pleas.

He’d said the slur while talking trash on the basketball court, Autumn recalled: “Oh! I’m ballin’ on y’all n----s.” And while cleaning up at the end of class: “These dumb n----s left the balls out again.” That day, Oct. 27, he’d said it again, smirking after having dribbled past a student and hitting a jump shot, Autumn said.

By then, Autumn, a straight-A student and one of only two dozen Black students at her small-town high school outside Lubbock, had been complaining about racial harassment involving three other classmates since the second week of school, according to interviews with Autumn and her family, messages they sent to administrators and a civil rights complaint filed Monday with the U.S. Department of Education. In September, she’d secretly recorded two boys in class calling her the N-word. When the alleged harassment continued, Autumn told administrators she was struggling to focus on her schoolwork. Her parents tried to intervene, demanding to speak with the principal and writing to the superintendent.

But the racist comments didn’t stop, according to the federal complaint.

That’s why, Autumn said, when the boy in gym class said the slur yet again, she snapped. “My mindset was: ‘This is the only way it’s gonna stop. This is the only way he’s gonna learn.’”

A classmate noticed what was about to happen and hit record on a cellphone. The grainy video appears to show Autumn — who had no major disciplinary history — grabbing the boy by the hood of his sweatshirt and yelling at him between each openhanded slap to the top of his head: “You’re gonna learn! … To stop! … That f------! … N----- shit!”

As the student wriggled out of Autumn’s grasp and darted away, she continued to shout at him, tears forming in her eyes as a substitute teacher stepped between them: “It’s not OK!” Autumn screamed. “It’s racist!”

The violent outburst, which had been building for months, lasted barely 30 seconds — but it was long enough to derail Autumn’s life.

Slaton administrators sentenced her to 45 days in an alternative school for students with severe disciplinary problems, according to the complaint and records reviewed by NBC News. Distraught and convinced that her future was ruined, Autumn’s family said she ran away from home last month and made a plan to kill herself. Now out of the hospital and recovering, the girl who’d entered this school year hoping to be named valedictorian is no longer sure she’s going to graduate on time.

“They took my beautiful baby girl — who my husband and I worked so hard to mold and love and support — and they broke her,” Autumn’s mother, JaQuatta Manahan, said in an interview. “They didn’t protect her. They cast her aside like she was trash.”

NBC News was unable to reach the family of the student Autumn was accused of assaulting.

At a time when some parents and politicians nationwide are fighting to keep difficult discussions about racism out of schools, Autumn’s story raises questions about how districts determine which types of student behavior are harmful enough to warrant harsh and decisive disciplinary action. In Autumn’s case, she and her family contend, school administrators drew a hard line, not in response to months of repeated and well-documented racial harassment, but only after a Black student acted in response to it.

Her experience is part of a troubling pattern at the Slaton Independent School District and in the broader Lubbock region in West Texas, according to a collective of civil rights advocacy groups that includes the local NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Intercultural Development Research Association, a nonprofit education equity group. The groups filed federal complaints with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of more than a dozen Black students, including Autumn, who say they’ve faced racial discrimination at Slaton and in a neighboring school district.

The complaint cited Autumn’s experiences in accusing Slaton of failing to train its staff in “how to effectively and appropriately prevent, identify, and respond to racial bullying and harassment.”

Jim Andrus, Slaton’s superintendent, said federal student privacy laws prevent the district from commenting on Autumn’s case. In a written statement to NBC News, Andrus said the district trains staff regularly on how to address bullying allegations and has zero tolerance for racism.

“Slaton ISD is working diligently to prevent all forms of discrimination and harassment and will continue to do so,” he said.

In a separate filing, the civil rights groups said Black students in the Lubbock-Cooper Independent School District, which shares a border with Slaton, have been subjected to a toxic racial environment in which white students have sometimes played whipping sounds on their phones as Black students walked by. Racial slurs are prevalent in hallways, students reported, and last year the district’s Laura Bush Middle School made headlines after someone created an Instagram page called “LBMS Monkeys” and posted photos of several Black students. Despite repeated pleas from parents, administrators haven’t done enough to stop the harassment, the civil rights groups alleged in their complaint.

In an interview with “NBC Nightly News,” Lubbock-Cooper Superintendent Keith Bryant said his district has taken several steps to prevent racial harassment in recent months, including new diversity training for teachers and students. He disputed the argument that Lubbock-Cooper has fostered a toxic racial climate.

“Do I think there’s racism in our community? Absolutely,” Bryant said. “Do I think it spills over into schools? I will certainly say it can. We work really hard to try to mitigate that. There is no place in Lubbock-Cooper ISD for racism.”

Paige Duggins-Clay, a civil rights lawyer with the Intercultural Development Research Association, said the experiences of Black students in the Lubbock region underscore the need for public schools to take proactive approaches to combating racism. Autumn’s allegations, in particular, she said, reveal how dangerous it can be when schools fail to treat racist bullying as a serious threat to students’ well-being. She pointed to research that shows children who are harassed based on their race, sexual orientation, gender or national origin are more likely to struggle in school and develop mental health disorders.

It’s ironic, Duggins-Clay said, that politicians and activists who’ve fought to stop schools from confronting racism — in the form of diversity training and changes in disciplinary policies — have done so this year under the banner of “parents’ rights.”

What about the rights of Black parents and children like Autumn? she said.

‘We’re gonna hurt you’

The 22-page civil rights complaint filed on Autumn’s behalf details alleged harassment that started the second week of school and culminated in the fight in gym class.

Autumn, whose family had moved to Texas from Ohio this summer, said she was sitting in one of her classes in August when a Hispanic classmate turned and asked what neighborhood she was living in. After she answered, Autumn said, the boy told her, “Oh, I run your block.”

She was annoyed but figured the kid was just trying to be funny or acting tough. Later in class, he repeated the line. Only, Autumn said, this time he ended the sentence by calling her the N-word.

Autumn, the oldest of three siblings, felt a chill run up her spine. She’d always loved history, and like most Black children, she’d known from a young age that the slur was associated with centuries of racial violence and oppression in America. It was shocking to hear it roll off the tongue of a classmate.

“That’s offensive,” Autumn remembered telling him.

This wasn’t the reception she’d imagined when she learned she was moving to Slaton, a railroad town of 6,000 people in the South Plains region of West Texas, where both of Autumn’s parents grew up. Slaton’s sleepy downtown looks like it was ripped from another era. Newcomers are greeted by a mural depicting Black workers toiling in a cotton field as a white farmer peers down from the seat of a tractor, along with the slogan “Slaton: Your Kind Of Town.”

The high school, located a few blocks away, serves fewer than 400 students, the overwhelming majority of whom are white or Hispanic. Only about 1 in every 15 students is Black, which — as Autumn soon discovered — often turned them into targets. NBC News spoke to three other Black teens named or referenced in the federal complaints who said classmates routinely say the N-word in the hallways at Slaton. Two recalled white students’ calling Black classmates “porch monkeys” and mocking them with gorilla sounds.

Aware of this culture, high school officials held a campuswide assembly on the third day of school to set expectations for student behavior. Administrators specifically warned that any student caught saying a racial slur would automatically be given a three-day in-school suspension.

The threat didn’t seem to dissuade the boy who told Autumn he runs her block, she said. One week after the assembly, Autumn said, he walked past her desk and repeated the line, then he mouthed the N-word. Autumn said that when she confronted him — “What did you say?” — the boy shook his head: “Nothing.”

A few days later, Autumn said, she overheard the boy laughing with a white student. “You start it, and I’ll finish it,” she heard one of them say.

A moment later, Autumn said, one of the boys said the first syllable of the N-word, and the other student said the rest. Another student who sat nearby laughed, Autumn said. After that, she said, their singsong chant became a staple of her school day.

When Autumn told her mother, JaQuatta, about what was happening, she was outraged. She’d grown up in Slaton in the 1990s and the early 2000s, and although she remembered kids’ making racist comments, it was never this bad. That night, she ordered a special pen with an audio recording device hidden inside it and instructed her daughter to turn it on the next time the boys started harassing her.

“I wanted to have proof,” JaQuatta said. “When it comes to Black children, I’m sorry to say it, you have to have that.”

Autumn said she used the device on Sept. 7 to record the boys saying the N-word chant. Afterward, one of them can be heard saying, “Hey, we’re gonna hurt you.” After Autumn challenged them — “What you just say?” — one of the boys told her she must be on crack.

The next morning, Autumn’s mother drove to the school and demanded to meet with the principal, Mario Aguirre, who’s Hispanic, and the assistant principal, Bo Medley, who’s white. JaQuatta said she detailed the daily harassment her daughter was reporting and told them she was worried that it was taking a serious toll on her.

“She is a breath of fresh air,” JaQuatta told them. “I would love to keep it that way.”

Aguirre immediately investigated Autumn’s allegations, according to notes included in her disciplinary file and reviewed by NBC News. Autumn said she shared the recording with Aguirre and played it for him, but his notes don’t mention it. Based on interviews with multiple students, he concluded that at least one of the boys had said the slur in class, the records show. That student accused Autumn of calling him an anti-Hispanic slur, which she denied. Aguirre reminded the boy of Slaton’s policy of giving students three-day in-school suspensions for racial slurs, and “proper discipline was assigned,” he wrote.

But in the weeks that followed, Autumn said, students continued to make racist comments, with some teasing her for reporting the earlier incidents: “What, are you gonna snitch on me, too?” A white student told her she was “smart for a Black girl,” Autumn said. Another said she was “kind of pretty for a Black girl.” Later, according to Autumn, a teacher and other students who later spoke to the principal, a few students began harassing Autumn every morning over her decision to sit during the pledge of allegiance because of her religious and political beliefs. Day after day, she said, they called her “weird” and told her she needed to respect the flag.

“Leave me alone,” Autumn recalled saying in response.

JaQuatta began to notice changes in the way her daughter was dressing and in her attitude about school. “I could see that she was struggling,” she said. Then, on Sept. 29, Autumn called her from school, crying. She’d left class and locked herself in a bathroom stall after another argument over the pledge.

This time, when JaQuatta and her husband showed up to confront administrators, she hit record on her cellphone. With Autumn sitting beside them, JaQuatta chastised school officials for failing to stop the harassment.

“Using the N-word with ‘er,’ you get three days?” JaQuatta said, referring to in-school suspensions. “When my ancestors, my family — they died? They were raped and killed, if we tell that part of history when it comes to that word. And you mean to tell me my child can’t feel safe? When all she wants to do is be excellent?”

Medley, the assistant principal, assured them that he would look more closely into Autumn’s complaints. He said he was surprised to learn that Autumn was struggling emotionally. She seemed so “bubbly” whenever he saw her in the hallway and at football games, he said, and according to her teachers, she was typically a joy in class.

Autumn told Medley it was becoming harder to keep up the facade.

“It’s getting to the point where school is dreadful,” she told him. “I don’t want to be hostile. But it’s like either I’m gonna have to keep dealing with it and just cower into a corner, or sooner or later, you’re gonna have to hear me roar.”

Autumn’s father, Broderick Manahan, warned that his daughter was being pushed to the brink. How would the school react, he asked Medley, if she finally did something to defend herself?

One month later, they got their answer.

Pain and punishment

Within hours, the cellphone video of Autumn smacking the boy in gym class began to spread via text messages. Mary Pegues, a former Slaton school board member and longtime teacher’s aide in a neighboring district, was furious when she saw the clip.

Pegues, who’s Black, said she’d been warning Slaton administrators for years that the racial climate was hostile to Black children, including two nieces she’s raising. One of them, Trinity Hawkins, 15, told Pegues the harassment was so overwhelming it made her wish she weren’t Black.

“I hate to come to you about this same old racism and bullying,” Pegues had written to Andrus, Slaton’s superintendent, in April, after Trinity came home complaining that a classmate had once again called her the N-word. “Please help me with this matter before it becomes a real problem.”

Pegues hated to see Autumn driven to violence, she said, but maybe now the district would finally take decisive action to stop racist bullying.

“I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up,” she said.

Three days after the gym class altercation, on the morning of Halloween, Autumn and her parents once again met with administrators at the high school. This time, it was to decide how she would be punished.

Principal Aguirre opened the meeting by reading from the findings of his investigation: “Autumn assaulted Student A in PE class by striking Student A in the face and head area while restraining Student A by holding on to the hood of his sweat top. Autumn was loudly swearing during the ordeal.” Aguirre also read notes from his interviews with more than a half-dozen students, each of whom said the boy had repeatedly said the N-word over the course of a week and that Autumn had repeatedly asked him to stop.

With her parents seated next to her at a conference table and Duggins-Clay, the Intercultural Development Research Association civil rights lawyer, watching over Zoom, Autumn was given a chance to explain herself. After she acknowledged that hitting the boy “was not the best way” to handle the situation, she detailed the months of harassment that led her to that point.

She explained how she’d always loved school and how that had changed since she moved to Slaton. She wasn’t sleeping. Her grades were slipping. She was struggling to get out of bed every morning.

“I reported situation after situation, to where, personally, I felt like we were almost begging for some type of reparation for everything going on, for some type of justice,” Autumn told the administrators, tears welling in her eyes. “In the process of all of that, I feel like I was losing myself.”

Duggins-Clay unmuted her microphone and urged the officials to consider that Autumn had acted in self-defense — and to take into account that she’d previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression — before they decided how to discipline her.

“We’re not saying that there shouldn’t be accountability here,” Duggins-Clay said. “But the context matters.”

With that, the school official charged with reviewing the matter handed down her finding: She agreed with Aguirre’s recommendation. Autumn would have to serve 45 days — one-quarter of the school year — at the district’s Disciplinary Alternative Education Program, or DAEP, a boot camp-like campus where students are made to wear orange uniforms and sit facing forward at all times and are permitted to “speak only when spoken to” by staff members.

Autumn’s younger brother, Triston, 14, had been sentenced to 30 days in DAEP on the second day of school after he witnessed a group of boys vandalizing school property and failed to intervene — part of a pattern of excessively harsh discipline against Black students at Slaton, the civil rights groups alleged in their federal complaint. After having heard Triston’s accounts of being hazed and bullied at the program, Autumn was terrified at the thought of going there.

She stared down at her lap as the district official went over the fine print of her sentence. Her mother, straining to keep her cool, asked for paperwork to appeal the decision and refused to sign the document acknowledging the outcome.

Autumn was quiet as she and her family left the school and headed to their car. Once they were nearly halfway home, she finally broke down.

“I don’t want to go to that school,” she sobbed.

Her father pulled over, and together he and his wife tried to comfort and encourage her. Be strong, they said. We’re going to fight this.

Autumn didn’t say it then, but she didn’t feel like she had any fight left in her.

‘You don’t understand my cry’

About 36 hours later, late on the evening of Nov. 1, Autumn’s parents say they got a phone call from a family member. He’d gotten word that Autumn had run off and was planning to kill herself.

“I froze,” JaQuatta said. “I told my husband I needed to pray, that I couldn’t accept any more bad news. So I stayed behind, and he left.”

Autumn’s father sped across town to the spot where his daughter had threatened to take her life. He pulled her into his arms and rushed her to a hospital, where she was admitted for inpatient psychiatric care.

Later, the physician overseeing Autumn’s care wrote in her medical record, “It is my medical opinion, Autumn would benefit from a change within her school environment.”

While she was still recovering, Autumn’s parents met, once more, with Slaton High School administrators. Officially, the purpose was to hear their appeal of Autumn’s discipline. But JaQuatta saw it as her chance to tell administrators, face to face, what happened to her daughter and who she believed was to blame.

“Y’all know who I am,” JaQuatta said after an official tried to take a roll call at the start of the meeting, according to an audio recording.

When it was her turn, she reminded Aguirre and Medley about all the times she and her husband had come to them, asking the district to put a stop to the harassment before it was too late.

In all those meetings, she’d done her best to remain calm. To advocate for her daughter without raising her voice. Always saying “sir” and “ma’am.” Doing everything she could to avoid being perceived as “the angry Black woman,” she said.

But the process had broken her, just as it had her daughter. It felt as if a dam had broken inside her, and now she was yelling and crying and cursing.

“My child tried to kill herself! You don’t understand. You don’t understand my cry, as a mother. You don’t understand my pain!”

Later in the meeting, she called Aguirre and Medley “demons with f------ halos, doing the devil’s work,” and told them she was coming for their jobs.

When she was finished, the room was quiet for a moment. Then Aguirre read a statement aloud.

“At this point, there will be no dialogue between the both of us,” he said. “A decision on this matter will be delivered to you in writing no later than 10 business days from today’s date.”

Purpose and recovery

Autumn doesn’t have clear memories from the days immediately after her initial disciplinary hearing. “I blacked out,” she said. “Disassociated.”

At the time, she felt “totally defeated.” She saw the perfect image of what she’d imagined for her senior year fading away, along with her hopes for everything that was supposed to come after.

Now, six weeks later, although she hasn’t yet returned to school, she’s seeing things with a clearer perspective and is once again ready to fight on her own behalf. “After I was able to get help and get away from the environment, that’s when I realized, ‘OK, there is a purpose here.’”

In response to her appeal, Slaton administrators notified Autumn’s parents last week that they are now willing to consider a reduced disciplinary sentence based on her mental health diagnosis, which they acknowledged is a disability that, by law, must be considered in their decision.

But getting back on track at school isn’t Autumn’s only goal. She says she wants to use her ordeal to help other students like her. That’s why she agreed to file a civil rights complaint, which she hopes will lead the federal government to open an investigation and mandate reforms at Slaton.

Her father, Broderick, said changes are needed, to protect not only Black children, but also white students like the one from gym class. The way he sees it, the school district’s failure to treat racial harassment like a serious offense “allowed that young man to get hurt.”

Already, the district has made at least one change.

Last month, after Pegues and other parents spoke out at a school board meeting about Autumn’s case and what they called a pattern of racism at Slaton, high school officials revised their disciplinary policy. Under the revised rules, the district said in a statement, students will face increasingly severe punishments for saying racial slurs at school, culminating with 30 days in DAEP for third offenses.

Autumn was glad to hear about the change. But she doesn’t think it’s enough to simply punish students. Schools, she said, also need to educate children about the history and impact of racial discrimination in America and help them understand why certain words have the power to destroy — or, in her case, nearly destroy — someone’s spirit.

On a recent call with Duggins-Clay, Autumn remembered something a Slaton administrator told her early in the school year: that she shouldn’t let something as small as a word drag her down. She could feel herself getting angry all over again.

“It’s not,” Autumn said, “‘just a word.’”

The post Taunted for being Black, a student fought back, civil rights complaint says. The 30-second fight derailed her life. appeared first on Cooper For All.

A Dallas law firm sent the Lubbock-Cooper Independent School District and its Superintendent Keith Bryant a letter two weeks ago on behalf of a group of families who allege Black students at Laura Bush Middle School were targets of racist discrimination and harassment last school year.

Ellwanger Law asked the district to respond by today so they could work together on resolutions before pursuing a civil rights lawsuit. The law firm told Texas Tech Public Media that Lubbock-Cooper replied yesterday and is open to discussions.

Sebastian Van Coevorden, a civil rights lawyer at Ellwanger Law, said the firm hoped the district would respond this way. On advice from legal counsel, Lubbock-Cooper on Tuesday declined Texas Tech Public Media’s request for comment.

Black students at Laura Bush Middle School said their white classmates consistently called them racial slurs, among other attacks that sometimes turned violent. At the end of the last school year, an anonymous Instagram account using the school’s logo posted pictures of Black students along with racist slurs. The account was removed and the district said it was investigating who was behind the page. They believed it was students.

According to the letter Ellwanger Law sent to Lubbock-Cooper, students and parents reported these issues of harassment and discrimination to the school and district administration.

“At this time, our clients have not been made aware of any action by administrators at Laura Bush Middle School to address the harms experienced by their children or any corrective measures to ensure that these incidents do not continue to occur,” reads the Aug. 17 letter.

Lubbock-Cooper has said in previous statements that racism is unacceptable in their district and they are taking actions to prevent it from happening in the future.

The latest demographic data available shows Lubbock-Cooper ISD’s student body is 3% Black, 39% Hispanic and 54% white. Demographics are similar at the campus level.

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On Wednesday, several Lubbock-Cooper parents spoke on the racial harassment they said their children faced while attending Laura Bush Middle School in the Lubbock-Cooper Independent School District.

“We’re all sitting here because all of us had to come together to stand up for our children,” said Tracy Kemp.

Tracey Kemp said her son was the victim of bullying while he was a student at Laura Bush Middle School. Kemp’s son said he was called racial slurs and was sent to the principal’s office multiple times for what he called self-defense.

“I went to Laura Bush middle school for one year. And during that time, I was experienced by calling the N word being called [a racial slur],” Kemp’s son said. “I would get into like small fights, and everybody will blame it on me.”

Another parent, Shardae McGaha said her daughter, a sixth grade student at Laura Bush, was called a racial slur while riding the school bus.

“She came home like hysterical, like, a little girl, not of our color, which is not cool for even us to say, you know, so she knows that. And the little girl proceeded to say the N word on the bus,” McGaha said.

McGaha said she reported it to the principal and her daughter was placed in a different class.

Terry Yharbrough and her family moved to Lubbock from California and her son began attending Laura Bush at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year. She said her son started facing “serious racial issues.”

“He’s talking to his teachers, he is talking to us, he’s letting us know, hey, this same kid, he is constantly doing things to me. He is constantly using racial slurs,” Yharbrough said. She went on to say her son was tried to avoid this student until he was approached by this student at the bus stop.

The children of these parents were also involved in the “LBMS_m0nkeys” Instagram page. The LBMS stood for “Laura Bush Middle School Monkeys.”

“What brought [all the parents] together was the Instagram posts called monkeys of Laura Bush Middle School. I was getting ready to head out in the morning, it was sent to my child,” Kemp said.

These parents along with several others reached out to a Dallas law firm to help them take legal action against LCISD. Ellwanger Law sent a letter to LCISD superintendent, Keith Bryant about these allegations on behalf of the parents and their children on Thursday, August 18.

Ellwanger Law gave LCISD 14 days to respond to the letter. If LCISD does not respond to the law firm said they “will take that to mean that Lubbock-Cooper ISD does not desire to work with us towards an amicable outcome.”

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