Parents Sue Miss. School District After White Teacher Allegedly Makes Comment About Hanging Black Ch

Local parents have filed a lawsuit against a central-Mississippi school district after they say a white substitute teacher made a horrific, threatening racist comment about their black son being hanged.

According to the Associated Press, Tony and Kayla Lindsey say that their son, who has since graduated, got into an argument in April and threatened to hit a white student. That was when the teacher encouraged the white student to allow Lindsey’s son, who is black, to hit him “so that they could hang him.”

“Everybody in the class gasped when she said it,” Carlos Moore, a lawyer representing the Lindsey family, said. “They knew exactly what she meant.”

Moore told the newswire that a student is believed to have recorded the encounter and that Lindsey’s son was suspended for three days when he returned to the school in an attempt to get the evidence.

The lawsuit names the Rankin County School District, contract labor provider Kelly Services and the teacher as defendants in the case, and is seeking monetary damages.

As the suit notes, the teacher, an employee at Kelly Services, was only suspended for two days following the outrageous remark.

“She was trying to discipline an unruly child and maybe she didn’t use the best choice of words, but there was no racial intent or racial overtone,” Fred Harrell Jr., a lawyer for the district said, claiming that the suit does not accurately recount the teacher’s exact words.

“He’s stirring up the media and he thinks that helps him stir up a settlement, but it won’t help with me,” Harrell added.

Moore countered saying that the family had been offered “hush money” totaling $5,000 but rejected it. Harrell, for his part, acknowledged that the district’s insurer may have made an offer.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle.