‘Hang them from a tree’: Family sues KC area school district, citing racist threats

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic and offensive language.

While her children were riding the school bus in Kearney last spring, mother Tiffaney Whitt said they were called the N-word by fellow students, who threatened to fight, kill and hang them from trees.

The threats were reported to the school authorities, but no students were reprimanded, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the Kearney school district and school bus service this week. It’s the second lawsuit filed against the district in the past few months alleging a pattern of severe racial harassment and discrimination against Black students in the overwhelmingly white Clay County district — and a failure by school officials to stop it.

“My boys have never been called the (N-word) or threatened until we moved to Kearney. My family was attacked on the school bus and on the school premises from the time we moved in until the time we left,” Whitt, a mother of seven sons, said in a statement to The Star.

“After constant incidents involving other students calling my children the (N-word) and threatening to kill them like ‘Emmitt Till’ and ‘hang them from a tree,’ it was time for us to go,” she said. “We were terrified and had no one to turn to for help. No one should ever feel this way and no child should ever go to school and feel unsafe. Schools should provide safety and security for all children. Kearney School District has proven that they are not a place for ‘ALL’ students.”

In response to the federal lawsuit, Kearney school district officials said they cannot comment on pending litigation.

District spokesman Ray Weikal told The Star that, “we are certainly aware that we need to continue to ensure that we are serving all students no matter what. And that we’re providing those outstanding educational experiences, and that they’re able to attend classes in schools that are nurturing and safe and welcoming for all students.

“That’s a baseline for us. And that’s work that we are going to continue to address, both within our schools and also in partnership with our community as a whole.”

In May, another family filed a lawsuit against the school district in Clay County Circuit Court, alleging that a former student, who is Black, was regularly subjected to white classmates hurling racial slurs at him, bullying him and threatening him with lynching.

The student received many threatening messages, including one that read, “THIS IS A WHITE TOWN (N****) BOY.” And others that said, “I hope I see your black ass in tree. Alabama wind chime style” and “I hope you and your monkey family gets jumped by all the whites in Kearney,” according to the lawsuit.

The student’s family claims administrators were repeatedly told about the discrimination and failed to protect the student.

Now in federal court, Whitt and her family are suing the district, alleging a similar and equally disturbing pattern of racial harassment against her children and inaction by school leaders. The family is represented by attorney Dan Curry, who also is representing the family in the other case.

The latest lawsuit argues that the district and school bus service “failed to train their employees to effectively and promptly end racial harassment occurring in their schools and buses.”

The Whitt family moved to Kearney in April 2020 and say they almost immediately began to encounter racial harassment. The lawsuit says the children were constantly harassed on the school bus by students calling them racial slurs and asking racist questions, like “Do you eat chicken and watermelon?” The driver allegedly overheard the racial harassment and did not stop it.

In March 2021, a white student used the N-word in the fifth grade class of one of Whitt’s sons. A teacher allegedly told Whitt “that it was because of the Negro Baseball Leagues were being discussed,” the lawsuit says.

In April, students on the school bus threatened Whitt’s children with lynching, and district officials allegedly did nothing to address it, the family claims. Whitt says that school officials did not call her back to follow up on her complaint, and that no students involved were punished.

Two weeks later, the lawsuit says that a school administrator called Whitt to say that her third-grade son was written up “for sticking his head in the aisle to be funny.”

Another one of Whitt’s sons, a junior high school student, said that he was called racial slurs on multiple occasions, and that he reported the incidents to school officials but they did nothing about it. After being called the N-word, he was taken to the administrator’s office so that he could “calm down,” the lawsuit says.

A week later, a school administrator contacted Whitt and accused her son of sexual harassment. Whitt went to the school to find out what was happening, and the administrator allegedly said that a female student had accused her son of harassment, and that if the administrator took Whitt’s side in the matter, he would face backlash from the community.

A few days later, an administrator told Whitt that her son would be suspended. Her son then received a death threat on Snapchat from a student referencing the sexual harassment allegation.

The threat read, “I am going to pull up at yo house and shoot u … (N-word) … it’s a group of (us) who going to pull and take u like they did Emmett till.” The message was followed by two laughing crying emojis.

The mother requested to review video footage of the alleged sexual harassment incident with administrators. The mother says that the video showed her son had not engaged in any conduct that could be construed as sexual harassment.

Whitt previously told The Star’s Editorial Board that her son was accused of touching a female student’s backside. She said the video clearly shows her son only “pointing at the young woman’s back” and another student in the video was doing the same thing.

Whitt objected to the suspension, accusing administrators of retaliatory behavior for her son’s report of racial harassment.

The school “administrator told her to lower her voice and threatened to call the police,” the lawsuit says.

The family is accusing school officials of remaining “deliberately indifferent to the continuing racial harassment and racially hostile educational environment” the children endured.

The Kearney school district’s student population is 91.5% white; only about 1% of students are Black, according to the state education department.

Weikal, the district spokesman, told The Star that administrators remain committed to improving equity and inclusion in their schools. This past spring, he said, schools rolled out a “respect campaign,” to teach students that regardless of what background their fellow students come from, they must respect one another.

He said the district held school events and pep rallies built around that theme.

“We’ll continue to expand that and work on progressing toward evolving and making sure that every single child, no matter what, can come to school in a culture and climate that is warm and welcoming, and certainly free of hate and free of violence,” he said.

After the previous lawsuit was filed in May, Kearney Interim Superintendent Todd White said that the district had come a long way with its diversity and equity work, but that it was still incomplete.

He pointed out that several years ago, the district formed its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, and students created clubs aimed at fostering conversations about harassment and discrimination in their schools. In 2019, he said the district changed some harassment policies, reached an agreement with the NAACP and hosted more conversations on race.

Whitt, though, argues that district leaders have proven unwilling to address the racial discrimination that students of color face in Kearney schools.

“I even joined the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee after several unresolved incidents involving racism with my children. I thought to myself, ‘I’m in the educational field, so I can help shed light and make things better.’ I was wrong,” Whitt said. “After the first meeting, I realized that these people didn’t want change. They were comfortable with the fact that they didn’t provide all students with an inclusive educational experience. It was like talking to a wall.”