Mooney history lesson on cotton-picking draws public ire

YOUNGSTOWN

A flurry of social media posts containing pictures of plastic bags of cotton led to questions about a class project in an African American History class at Cardinal Mooney High School.

According to a number of social media posts – and confirmed by the Diocese of Youngstown’s Assistant Superintendent Randy Rair – students in an African-American history class engaged in a project in which they picked seeds out of cotton as part of a lesson on 19th-century slavery in the United States while “period music” played.

Upset parents and students took to posting on social media and anonymously calling The Vindicator to discuss the incident.

Cardinal Mooney issued a news release in response to say Mooney “bases its courses on the Ohio Learning Standards” and “certain content in American history is sensitive and always difficult to teach.”

Rair told The Vindicator the “purpose was to show the inhumanity of slavery.”

Read more about the matter in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.