43
Cardinal Mooney class picks cotton, some parents offended
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 Assistant Superintendent Randy Rair of the Diocese of Youngstown – 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.”
When asked if it was possible that black students might view the exercise differently from other students, Rair said, “We have to be sensitive to how different histories impact different cultures differently.”
“Cardinal Mooney is always taking proactive steps to deepen a sense of tolerance and inclusion within the school community,” the Mooney news release said, noting the activity was meant to portray “the role of slavery in Southern agriculture” and “the teacher’s methods in the class included a variety of activities. All students participated in each activity in the lesson.”
Rair said the exercise was to show how cotton seeds are extracted and how the process changed after the cotton gin was invented.
Jimma McWilson, vice president of the Youngstown Chapter of the NAACP, said although the organization has not yet had the opportunity to meet with the Mooney administration, the organization’s representatives have the intent of being fair to the school while simultaneously protecting the child.
“The school is still filling out the Office for Civil Rights forms right now,” he said. “We are in the earliest stages of gathering information right now.”