Mock student slave auction rocks private Westchester school

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

March 11, 2019

By Ellen Moynihan and Ben Chapman

A white teacher at The Village Lutheran Church, Chapel School allegedly held a mock slave auction with her black students as part of a fifth-grade history lesson for her class. March 8, 2019. (Ellen Moynihan / New York Daily News)

A white teacher at a Westchester County school held a mock slave auction with her black students as part of a fifth-grade history lesson for her class — plunging the private institution into chaos, a parent and sources with knowledge of the situation told the Daily News Friday.

Administrators at the Chapel School in Bronxville are investigating the allegation that the teacher allowed her white students to bid on black students who pretended to be slaves during a fake auction Tuesday.

The matter is currently being investigated by school officials and is also being probed by state Attorney General Letitia James.

Vernex Harding, of Bronxville, said her son, who is black, was one of the students singled out by teacher Rebecca Antinozzi for the controversial history lesson.

Harding said her family is rattled by the incident and she’s spoken to the school’s leadership.

“I’m shocked and infuriated that this happened to my son,” said Harding, who is an educational administrator at another school. “I’m very shaken.”

Harding said her son told her Tuesday night that Antinozzi brought three of her black students out of the classroom and into the school hallway where she pretended to place them in shackles.

Harding said Antinozzi then brought the three black students back into class where she conducted a mock slave auction of the students, with the white kids in class posing as wealthy slave owners and the teacher acting as auctioneer…

Read full article here

More information here and here

More Breaking News here

View more ABHM galleries here

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.