‘I was the proudest man in the universe’ after football coach tossed old display, says Black Lives Matter ‘rebranding campaign’ poster was removed from the top of a Mount Pleasant, Georgia, high school
A prominent black former high school football coach in Georgia is seeking to reverse his firing after claiming the poster that triggered the decision was protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
Danny Wilson, a former Mount Pleasant and Killen football coach who is now leading the campaign, said in an interview on Wednesday that the American Civil Liberties Union is helping him take the case to court.
Play Video 1:45 ‘If anything, they’re napping’: Georgia high school censorship stunt – video
“I was the proudest man in the universe when I took it down,” Wilson told the Guardian. “I know there’s going to be plenty of things after that, but I’m not letting any of that mess with the decision I made.”
On Tuesday, the Jackson Independent School District administration fired Wilson after a flag posted on a bulletin board at the school went missing, prompting a prompt investigation. After officials found the flag was a rebranded “Black Lives Matter” poster, Wilson was shown the same evidence and fired.
The display showed black people with the words: “Though police may die, they will not end slavery.” It also included a separate sign that read: “All lives matter” and in smaller type, a peace sign.
The top of the banner, however, showed a black silhouette with the words: “They shoot us but we live.” In a separate message, the sign also was blurred out. The lettering was then “blocked out”, district administrator Scott Easterly said.
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Easterly said that the district was taking the incident seriously and that “racism was not involved in the circumstances of the incident”.
In a tweet that drew national attention, Wilson challenged the school’s decision and declared that he did not want his organization, the Campaign to Eradicate Racism (CER), to be silenced.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based religious rights organization that has supported prominent conservative causes, announced that it would support Wilson in the legal battle against the school district’s decision. The attorney general of the state, spokesman Scott Harris, has said that the state would investigate the school.
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The league CER most recently fought, the National Football League, has its own controversial incident after it cited concerns of “hate and division” after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem. Despite the protests starting in 2016, Kaepernick, a former US Naval Academy quarterback, is still not signed to a team and has said he plans to stand during the anthem next season.
Backlash has been swift, and not always friendly. Eight months ago, after Colin Kaepernick sat during the national anthem at an NFL game in protest of police brutality, the Dallas police chief David Brown told the Dallas Morning News that Kaepernick was disrespecting the military, and after posting an image of the comment online, the Dallas mayor, Mike Rawlings, said: “It’s just wrong to not stand up and salute your national anthem.”
Because football players kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality, Walter Carpenter, a student at Mount Pleasant’s Mount Olive regional high school, was fired from a paid internship at the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens in 2015. The team didn’t comment on the case at the time.