Speech, After Obama

Nsombi Lambright, executive director of the Mississippi ACLU, said the organization has fielded numerous calls about Barack Obama’s election and subsequent challenges student free speech.

by Bryan Doyle
November 12, 2008

Aaron Thomas, a black University of Mississippi student from Jackson, said that 10 minutes after Obama captured California on Election night, he had a reaction like many people across the country, screaming outside Kincannon residence hall, “Obama won, Obama won!”

Three students started calling him the n-word from the dormitory windows above. Thomas then went inside Kincannon to confront the individuals when police arrived.

“It struck a nerve,” Thomas told the Jackson Free Press. University Police Department Chief Calvin Sellers later confirmed the incident.

Police made no arrests.

Last Tuesday in Chicago, Barack Obama captured the presidency in what was an historic and exciting election. This past week in Mississippi, the post-election exuberance held by the state’s young people led to race and speech-related incidents, such as the Thomas episode, in schools across the state.

The Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union has received numerous reports from parents and students regarding the suppression of speech related to Obama’s victory and about the election in general.

Since the staff of the Mississippi ACLU first reported incidents on Friday, the organization has collected additional calls from different counties across the state, bringing the total number of official complaints to more than 10.

The ACLU has received calls from Jackson-area Rankin and Madison counties, but also Desoto, Smith and Montgomery counties. Citing privilege, the ACLU would not reveal the names of the specific schools in question.

For one middle school in Madison County, the call came from the school’s vice principal, according to Mississippi ACLU Executive Director Nsombi Lambright. Teachers at the school had apparently prohibited students from talking about the election in class, and threatened any student who tried with after-school detention. The administrator had said that the situation had been taken care of, but was calling with concerns of its legality.

In another incident in Pearl, two students were allegedly kicked off a school bus for mentioning the President-elect’s name.

“We have never had anything like this after a presidential election, nothing like this widespread suppression of school voice … Students are very excited, one way or the other, about this election,” Lambright said. “This election process energized youth in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time. Of course they’re going to want to talk about this.”

Before the election, Lambright said, the ACLU fielded several calls from worried parents because the students at their school were getting into fights about the issue. School administrations started planning how best to keep the students safe.

“So instead of trying to figure out a way to deal with that in a way that gives students a chance to talk and express themselves and keep order at the same time, they said just don’t talk at all.”

Paul Quinn, assignment editor for The Daily Mississippian, the University of Mississippi student newspaper, said that many other campus dormitories reported disturbances. “The only incident that I feel was racially charged was the one outside Kincannon. All the other ones were noise-related.”

Quinn said that though tensions were high the night of the election, the campus has remained calm since then.

The Mississippi ACLU can represent suspended students at school hearings, and can contact local schools on behalf of families who feel their students’ freedom of speech has been denied.

“This should be a teaching opportunity for our students. We want to keep them active and we want to keep them engaged. If they can’t talk about it, how are we going to train the next generation of leaders?

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