An Ohio middle school teacher has resigned after a display of a racist image during Black History Month morning announcements sparked student walkouts and widespread condemnation.
The Bexley Middle School teacher supervised the display of an image of an orangutan eating a watermelon on a green screen background, the Columbia Dispatch reported.
Bexley City Schools Superintendent Jason Fine announced the teacher’s resignation in a letter to parents on Friday.
The teacher, who has not been identified, had earlier been placed on administrative leave.
“We know this cannot be treated as any sort of ending or closure and we are steadfast in our commitment to our continued efforts to eradicate racism in Bexley Schools,” Mr Fine wrote.
Mr Fine acknowledged in a heated public meeting on Wednesday that the school district was aware that students had also been widely sharing racist imagery on social media, WSYX reported.
Parents said that Bexley, a suburb of Columbus, had a history of racist and offensive behaviour within its school district.
The incidents have sparked threats of lawsuits and a student walkout on Friday, WSYX reported.
A 7th-grader told the news site that students felt compelled to act after being left hurt and disgusted at having to view the racist imagery.
“I was confused. I was angry. There were so many emotions going on in my head,” the student told WSYX.
Bexley Mayor Ben Kessler and Council President released a joint statement on Friday acknowledging that the series of racist incidents had caused “a tremendous amount of pain and hurt”.
“For many of us, this week has been marked by profound sadness and dismay, and for others it has only reaffirmed a truth that has been felt within our families for generations,” the statement read.
The racist trope of African Americans being “excessively fond” of watermelons “exploded in American popular culture” after the end of slavery, historian William R. Black wrote in The Atlantic in 2014.
“Free black people grew, ate, and sold watermelons, and in doing so made the fruit a symbol of their freedom,” Mr Black wrote.
“Southern whites, threatened by blacks’ newfound freedom, responded by making the fruit a symbol of black people’s perceived uncleanliness, laziness, childishness, and unwanted public presence.”
On Friday, a parent said she had withdrawn her children from a Miami daycare centre after a teacher painted preschoolers’ faces black for Black History Month.
