Jamey Petree Sues Detroit-Area School District Over Reading From Julius Lester's "From Slave Ship to Freedom Road"

Jamey Petree sues Detroit-area school district over reading from Julius Lester's book "From Slave Ship to Freedom Road."

So, now the mention of the word slavery in a history lesson is grounds for a lawsuit. Jamey Petree, father of a fifth-grade student at Margaret Black Elementary School in Sterling Heights, Detroit, has sued the school district claiming his daughter, Jala, was racially harassed by a fifth-grade teacher's reading aloud from a book about slavery.

The suit claims Jala Petree's teacher at Margaret Black Elementary School in Sterling Heights read excerpts from Julius Lester's "From Slave Ship to Freedom Road" that contain racial epithets and racist characterizations, The Macomb Daily reported.

The suit against Warren Consolidated Schools was filed Nov. 3 in Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens, according to court records. It was filed by Jala's father, Jamey Petree, and seeks more than $50,000 in damages. Source

The school maintains that the excerpts were read last school year during a unit to prepare students for Black History Month. According to media reports, the lawsuit claims the reading has "affected the conditions of learning duties and the advantages of her further education, and seriously affected her mental and emotional well-being, past, present and future." Really? Consider what the slaves who lived through that nightmare felt about themselves and their subsistence.

I am at a loss as to what to say in this case. So, you can't perform reenactments of slavery without ticking some people off and now reading excerpts from a lesson on slavery is a problem? Absolutely ridiculous.