Some Tuscaloosa-area high school students walked out of class Wednesday after escalating complaints about a Black History Month production and alleged racism at Hillcrest High School.

About 300 students protested a school administration that organizers said had promoted “psychological trauma” among Black students. Students claimed that an administrator said their Black History Month event shouldn’t mention figures before 1970 — a claim that school officials denied. Students also said they knew Black students who faced stricter school dress codes and lower academic expectations.

“We decided that we needed to bring attention to some issues here at Hillcrest High School that school administration has failed to adequately address,” senior Jamiyah Brown said in a speech on Wednesday, claiming some Black students at the school were “targeted and punished unjustly without justifiable reasoning.”

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“We are disrespected and the administration has created a climate of intimidation and bullying towards those that challenge authority,” she continued. “When our parents seek to address these issues, the administration responds in a dismissive and hostile manner.”

Students, some holding signs of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream Speech,” protested peacefully for about an hour on the lawn of the high school, according to WVUA 23 News.

In an email sent to staff Wednesday morning, Hillcrest High School Principal Jeff Hinton said he expected students to protest and asked teachers to “respect their decision” to walk out or remain in class.

Black History Month programming

King is a figure that students say was discouraged from being included in the upcoming Black History Month program, among other Civil Rights icons and major historical events like slavery and Reconstruction.

Brown, who is part of the production, said she was told earlier this fall by a white administrator that the students should include more “current” Black figures, “like Beyoncé,” in the production, and that “old stuff” made people feel uncomfortable.

Brown said she and her peers were frustrated by the administrator’s comments, but didn’t feel like they could push back at the time. But as more problems began to arise between the students and the administrator, word got out on social media. The local NAACP chapter got involved.

“That’s what blew it up,” Brown said in an interview with AL.com. “It opened up other issues that we didn’t know about.”

Hillcrest High School leaders, however, have denied censoring the program.

“The Black History Month/Unity program at Hillcrest High School is student-created and student-led,” a spokesperson for Hillcrest High School told WVUA. “It is not true that faculty or staff supervising the program told students that history prior to 1970 could not be included in the program. This is a rumor started by someone not part of the student group creating the program. When several community members heard this rumor and contacted Hillcrest High administration out of concern, administration explained that this was false information that was circulating.”

Tuscaloosa NAACP President Lisa Young said that statement didn’t gel with what she’d heard from students during the past week.

“There are too many students saying the same thing for it to be untrue,” she told AL.com. “The students walked out to bring awareness to issues that they feel that the administration is ignoring.”

‘It opened up other issues’

In a series of meetings over the past month, Brown said she was made aware of several issues facing Black students at her school – where just over half of students are Black, and all administrators are white, according to state records.

Brown said Black students were repeatedly disciplined for dress code violations, even for wearing similar clothes to white students. One of her peers, she claimed, was told she looked like a “streetwalker” from an administrator.

And others, Brown said, were told they should “drop out” by staff, or punished without evidence that they had done anything wrong.

“It’s not just about the Black history month program,” Brown said in an interview with AL.com. “The Black History month program and the discrimination are two different problems.”

System leaders acknowledged the controversy in a statement to local news last week, but have not yet responded to AL.com’s questions and allegations made at the student walkout.

Local civil rights leaders held a forum Saturday for students. The local NAACP chapter met again with students, parents and staff at the high school on Monday morning. Young said she was disturbed to hear some of the accounts given by students about issues in the school.

“I’m inclined to believe that the administration at the school has allowed a culture of racial insensitivity that has created a toxic learning environment for students,” Young said.

“We are thankful for a community who cares about our students,” the school district said in a statement given to local news last week. “Anytime someone in our community has concerns about the well-being of our students, we appreciate them coming directly to our administrators to discuss their concerns.”

Students were not disciplined for participating in the protest, Young said.

Brown and her peers are currently working with Young to schedule a meeting with the superintendent, she said. Moving forward, they want to address ways to improve staff diversity, encourage freedom of expression and ensure that all students have due process and are being treated equally to their peers.

And if that doesn’t happen, Brown said, she and her peers plan to rally against an upcoming tax vote – a major school improvement effort that the district has been proposing all year – and also take that energy to the next election cycle.

“I just really hope that doing this today shows them that we are going to take a stance for doing things that are right,” Brown said.

So far, the students’ Black History Month program is still scheduled for Feb. 22 at 9 a.m.