The seven students, all of whom are Black, were expelled by a mostly white school board after a two-to-three-minute fracas in the bleachers during a football game between Eisenhower and MacArthur high schools. Following protests, including a march of more than 1,000 people November 7, the two-year expulsions were reduced to one year and board officials said the students could attend a school for "troubled" students.

This "compromise" — brokered with the help of Governor George Ryan — was rejected by the students, backed up by leaders of the Decatur and national Rainbow/PUSH. November 8 and 9, the students appeared in the morning at Eisenhower, accompanied by Rev. Jesse Jackson and other supporters, seeking readmission. The school board refused to open Decatur's three high schools those days, claiming a threat to "public safety." Forty-four percent of the public high school students are Black.

Jackson and Rainbow/PUSH attorney Lewis Myers announced to the media and a community rally attended by hundreds November 9 that a suit had been filed in federal court challenging the school board's "zero tolerance for violence" policy as unconstitutional. The suit seeks the students' immediate reinstatement.

The students also face possible prison terms on the felony charges.

Jeanelle Norman, president of the NAACP in Decatur, told the Herald & Review, "This problem [students being expelled from school] is happening all over Illinois and other states and needs to be addressed."

Ultrarightist Matt Hale from East Peoria brought his white supremacist poison to Decatur November 9, claiming his visit was in response to "angry white parents."

Reporters for the Militant spoke with working-class residents on Jasper Street — some Black and some white — and found reflections of the polarization being whipped up here by city officials and the capitalist media. Dorothy Fobbs, who graduated from Eisenhower 10 years ago, is Black. "I'm all for it," she said, referring to the protests, and hopes to participate in the next march. She opposes the "alternate" school for the expelled students and says they should "go back to Eisenhower."

Robin Terrell, who is white, dropped out of Eisenhower in 1993 and started by saying the expelled students "don't belong in school" and that Jackson "should leave it alone." But later she said that in her experience most teachers at Eisenhower "picked on" Black students and were "prejudiced against them" and that is "part of the problem."

TV coverage in the region has featured interviews with industrial workers who are white who assert that racist discrimination is at the heart of the matter. For several years, earlier in the 1990s, thousands of striking and locked out workers in this city — both white and Black — fought bitter union battles at Caterpillar, A.E. Staley, and Bridgestone Firestone.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home