Parents are furious after a Virginia high school failed to notify them that their elementary school children were participating in a “Black Lives Matter” play as part of the school’s Black History Month event.
The play, held at Orange County High School last week, contained skits like “I Can’t Breath,” “Does my Black Life Matter?” and “They Don’t Really Care About Us,” Fox News Insider reported Thursday.
In an interview with Fox and Friends, one couple said that they were only informed that their eight-year-old daughter would be singing in a “Motown Medley,” but said they were not notified of the true nature of the performance. The parents did not reveal their last names.
The student’s mother, Rebecca, who attended the performance, said that as soon as she entered the auditorium to watch her daughter sing, she felt uneasy. Many of the students were wearing “Hands up don’t shoot” shirts. She told Fox that she immediately contacted her husband, Charles, a deputy sheriff, to let him know what was going on.
Charles wrote in a Facebook post on a pro-police page, that students recited “last words” to the audience during the show.
One student said, “I’m from Ferguson Missouri… I was told to put my hands up. I did, and I was shot 7 times. My name is Michael Brown,” Charles wrote in the post.
The Justice Department, however, recently concluded that witness accounts that Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was shot were “not credible.”
After the show, Charles said he was faced with serious questions from his daughter about “why cops shoot black people,” why cops “shoot good people” and whether he is a “bad cop.”
“It really took me off guard. We had to have a discussion with our daughter in great detail about current events that we should have never had to have,” Charles told Fox.
School superintendent Brenda Tanner defended the students and the program.
“I support the young people. They didn’t show anger, they didn’t show defiance. They were presenting information in a way that they were trying to deal with issues. And they kept a recurring theme throughout the night was our lives matter,” Ms. Tanner said in a statement.
The parents say they recognize the high school students worked hard to put on the show, but argue that is was not appropriate for elementary school children to be exposed to that subject matter. They added that the school board’s response has not been sufficient.
“Knowing that it was going to be controversial material, we should have been notified as parents and we were not. There has been no apology, there has been no ’this will not happen again.’ That needs to be done,” Charles told Fox.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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