A community is left outraged after a Charlotte, North Carolina high school teacher recreated segregation in her classroom for Black History Month. The teacher is being accused of “terrorizing children” with “offensive” and “traumatic” decorations depicting “white” and “colored” entrances.
As teachers at West Charlotte High School decorated their classroom doors and doors in the school hallways to celebrate Black History Month, one teacher’s set of classroom doors stood out the most. While one door represented Motown, another featured the message: “From Chains to Change,” showing an image of two hands in chains.
Meanwhile, one classroom had two doors decorated and depicting segregation. One door was decorated as a “white entrance” and another door was decorated as a “Colored entrance.” It’s reported that the doors are receiving mixed reviews. While some view the decorations as a great way to evoke important discussions about Black history, the remaining comments are more critical, finding the decorations highly offensive and tone-deaf.
According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District (CMS), once officials were made aware of the decorations, they had them immediately taken down. The school said the display was not in alignment with the district’s curriculum and approved lesson plans. CMS gave WCNC Charlotte the following statement:
“The school district is required to provide social studies and history lessons to all our students in an age-appropriate manner. Teachers at West Charlotte High School decorated doors that displayed inappropriate content. The activity is not aligned with state standards or with the CMS curriculum and approved lesson plans.
Once school leadership was made aware of the doors, the displays were immediately removed. This happened over the course of a few hours in one school day on February 14, 2024. Moving forward, the district’s teachers will be retrained in the specific social studies curriculum practices that can be utilized in lesson plans to teach students.”
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Supporting the “offensive” display recreating segregation, was the North Carolina high school teacher’s daughter, Laquinta Caldwell. She told WCNC Charlotte that her mother was trying to visually represent segregation and show her students how things have changed since the times when Black people weren’t allowed to use the same doors, bathrooms, water fountains, etc. as white people.
Caldwell said the display has been taken out of context, explaining, “[My mother’s] only thing was making sure that the kids knew, or could see, a visual of how things were back in the day.” In viral photos of the two decorated doors, there is a red and gold sign above the two entrances that says, “Sears Department Store 1930.”
Caldwell said the display is to recreate what it was like shopping at a Sears store in the 1930s and that people are missing the message. She added, “The purpose of the door was to show that Sears, which is a department store, was one of the first stores that allowed Blacks to shop with white people.”
Despite her mother’s display receiving backlash and being taken down, Caldwell said she is proud of her mom and her work, but disappointed it was ultimately removed. She shared, “Overall, I think that her mission was accomplished. I think that she was able to get through a lot of people whether it was negative or positive.”
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Yes, this picture out of context of the learning experience is upsetting. I’m from the North, and as a child in the ’50s, I was not exposed to this sort of blatant segregation, and it bothered me. However, if this was done properly, I see this as a super way of letting our next generation know the atrocities “Coloreds” had to endure just because of their skin color by making it real for a day. We need to teach history to learn from history if we don’t want to repeat it. The “Sears 1930” clearly makes this an historical reenactment. I would applaud the teachers for their creative initiative to give additional context to Black History Month observance.