Lumpkin County High School history teacher Catherine Ariemma (Fox)
From the AJC.com:
Catherine Ariemma never intended for students to be offended by the sight of four Ku Klux Klansmen at Lumpkin County High School.
But that’s how senior Cody Rider said he felt last Thursday when he looked up and saw the students — dressed in white hoods and sheets — walking through the school cafeteria.
“I was outraged,” the 18-year-old mixed-race student told the AJC Monday night. “I was mad, so I started walking to them.”
A coach, Josh Chatham, intervened by grabbing Rider by the arm.
Ariemma, a six-year veteran with the Lumpkin County school system, said the students, who were working on a film project for her advanced placement U.S. history class, meant no harm.
She admitted that she may have made a mistake by letting the students film the Klan reenactment on campus.
“I feel terrible that I have students who feel threatened because of something from my class,” Ariemma told the AJC. “In hindsight, I wouldn’t have had them film that part at school.”
But the damage was done.
A report went to school officials, after parents of black students learned what had happened and called the district.
Ariemma was placed on paid suspension, and activist the Rev. Markel Hutchins was called to the town 50 miles north of Atlanta to help quell what seemed to be growing frustration among Dahlonega’s small African American community.
“When we leave this issue, we want to leave this town a better place,” Hutchins told a group of about 50 people who crowded into a tiny church Monday evening. “It seems to me that in many places around the country, we’re not divided as much as (we are) disconnected.”
And Rider, who was already in trouble for fighting at a football game last fall, needed help to calm himself.
“I wasn’t going to say anything to them,” Rider said, hinting he thought of taking other actions.
But Hutchins told reporters Monday evening during a meeting of concerned community members that Cody told him, “He wanted to swing on the students.”
Hutchins said if that had happened they might have gathered in Lumpkin County for a different reason.
Ariemma’s students were filming reenactments of various historical periods last week, and four donned Klan outfits, superintendent Dewey Moye told the AJC.
She said she walked with them through the cafeteria, but forgot students were there eating lunch.
“I told them, ‘I don’t want you to walk through the building by yourselves because I don’t want people to get the wrong idea,” Ariemma said. “I failed to think about that there was a lunch track in the cafeteria when they went by. Then I heard some students start giggling.”
Students saw her white-clad students, and Rider’s parents later complained about it.
“We determined, obviously, that she used extremely poor judgment,” Moye said.
Ariemma said she hopes something good can come from this.
“I asked Mr. Moye if there was some way we could turn this into a teachable moment,” she said.
