Grambling Editor cries foul as photos, story on race lesson yanked from Web

GRAMBLING, LA – The editor of the Grambling State University student newspaper said university president Horace Judson censored the paper by ordering that a story and photos of a race lesson at an on-campus elementary school be removed from its Web site.
De’Eric Henry said Monday that The Gramblinite is caught in Judson’s efforts to investigate the lesson on racism, which occurred Sept. 20. That same day, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton led thousands in a civil rights march in Jena, about 100 miles away from the university.
During the lesson on racism, a noose was placed around a child’s neck at the Grambling-run Alma J. Brown Elementary School. The school, like the university, is predominantly black. At least one photo shows a woman lifting in her arms a young female student who has a rope around her neck.
The hangman’s noose is a hated symbol of Old South lynchings and figured prominently in the case against six black teens in Jena. They were charged in the beating of a white schoolmate in the culmination of fights between blacks and whites after hangman’s nooses appeared in a tree at Jena High School.
Calls to Judson, the Grambling State press office and the school’s principal were not returned Monday.
The (Monroe) New Star quoted Judson on its Web site Monday as saying the elementary school incident is being investigated.
Justin LaGrande, the Gramblinite reporter who witnessed the incident, said the matter has been “blown way out of proportion.” LaGrande told the News Star that teachers used the rope because the children asked about the so-called “Jena Six” case.
The lesson for kindergarten and first-grade students at Alma J. Brown Elementary was racism, with teachers explaining the symbolism of a noose and allowing children to carry shackles and chains, also symbols of oppression, The Gramblinite reported. The students also held a march for equality at the school. Some carried signs supporting the Jena teens.
“History will always be a part of us all, and we must help our children become more knowledgeable of the world around us by being involved, and the students will remember it,” The Gramblinite quoted teacher Rhonda Jones as saying.
A woman identified as Irene Booker wrote in a comment posted at the newspaper’s Web site Friday that it was a “(safe) demonstration” meant to show what the rope symbolized to blacks. The posting, in response to a reader’s comment commending the staff for teaching kids about injustice, goes on to say that the rope was around the neck of her granddaughter, whom she said she was holding.
“In order to understand racism, one must experience it to make a connection,” the posting read, adding that many students didn’t understand the “intimidation of the noose.”
An Irene Booker is listed as a supervising teacher at Alma J. Brown Elementary in Grambling’s staff directory. A school secretary said Booker was not available for comment.
“I believe they’re trying to figure out what happened at the school, and we’re caught in the crossfire,” Henry said. “But I think the president doesn’t understand the importance and the right that journalists have, because to call over and demand, or order, that the photos be taken off a Web site, or to try to (say) what goes online with prior review is censorship. I don’t think he’s grasped how the media is run,” he said.
According to Henry, the photos were online a week before readers complained they were offensive. He said he decided, after speaking with another editor, to take down those photos – “two or three” of them – but kept up the others and the story.
When the staff was out of town, he said Judson ordered a faculty adviser to remove everything else. Henry said when he found out what happened Monday morning, he ordered that everything – save the initial photos he took down – be uploaded again.
Staff members were to meet with Judson Monday, he said.
Pam Mitchell-Wagner, executive director of the Louisiana Press Association, said that if the university ordered the story and remaining photos down, “I would think that it is censorship.”
“In this case, certainly the incident happened and it’s out there, and to take it off the student Web site, at this point, is sort of like closing the barn door after the horse got out, really,” she said.
The incident was worth reporting, she said, but she also questioned the paper’s decision to remove several photos after reader complaints.
“On the Web site, if you publish something, do you take it down and change it because you got complaints?” she asked, saying it opens an “interesting journalistic ethics question.”