Knight High target of protesters
Marchers say blacks mistreated
By JAMES RUFUS KOREN
Valley Press Staff Writer
PALMDALE – “It all started over crumbs.”
That’s how 16-year-old Kenngela Lockett described last week’s lunchroom food fight that ended with the arrest of three Knight High School students and one parent and has drawn the ire of parents and civil rights activists, who staged a protest in front of the school Friday morning.
More than 70 parents, students, area residents and activists – led by Najee Ali of the Los Angeles-based Project Islamic Hope – stood across 70th Street East from the high school and waved signs decrying last week’s events as brutal, racist and unnecessary.
“This young girl was beat,” Ali said referring to Lockett, who said her wrist was fractured by a school security guard. “There is a disturbing trend of victimizing black students. ?€? Whether it’s Jena, La., or here in Palmdale, black students are being victimized.”
Lockett and her 14-year-old brother, Josh, as well as 15-year-old student Pleajhai Mervin and her mother, Letrisha Majors, were arrested Sept. 18 on charges including suspicion of battery to a school employee, suspicion of challenging a school official to a fight and littering.
The Sept. 18 confrontation started when a few students started throwing birthday cake at one another. Mervin was taking the cake remnants to the trash can but dropped them on the floor. Security guard Chris Niemeyer told Mervin to clean up the mess and she did, but not to Niemeyer’s satisfaction, Mervin said.
After arguing with Niemeyer, Mervin said, “He grabbed me and put my hands behind my back and pushed up on my arms until it hurt.”
While Mervin was being arrested, Josh Lockett took out a video camera and started recording. A guard came and told Lockett to give him the camera, but he handed it to a friend instead. Lockett said three guards tackled him and pinned him on the ground.
Kenngela Lockett tried to pull the guards away and was arrested herself.
Meanwhile, students with cellphones had called the students’ parents, and Majors had made her way to the high school. She was later arrested – witnesses said she was detained on suspicion of battery.
Speaking at a preprotest press conference outside the high school, Ali read a list of demands, calling for all charges against Majors and the three students to be dropped, for Niemeyer to be fired, for the U.S. Department of Justice to look into last week’s events and for Majors, a substitute special education instructional assistant in the Palmdale School District, to be reinstated.
Ali said Majors has been suspended from work until an investigation into the circumstances of her arrest is completed.
Carolyn Hansen, the district’s assistant superintendent for human resources, said for her to comment on a personnel issue would be inappropriate.
Friday’s protest had been billed as a student walkout, but most students who attended the event went inside before classes started. Ali said he didn’t want the children to get truancy tickets or disrupt morning classes.
A few students stayed afterward, though, and some parents said their children were staying home.
“I took my kids out of school today,” Serena Ochoa said. “I didn’t feel safe.”
Michelle Boyd said her son plays football at Knight and wants to leave the school. She also voiced a common opinion among the protesters: That the students were mistreated because they are black. “This situation is about a black child being brutalized by a white security guard,” she said. “It wouldn’t have happened to a white girl at the hands of a black security guard. Then we’d have other problems.”
Throughout the protest, which lasted for more than an hour, Ali, parents and activists from the Victorville chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference compared the arrest of the three students to the six black students charged with attempted murder in Jena, La.
The Jena 6, as the Lousiana teens are called, allegedly beat up a white student. The attack came at the tail end of several months of racially charged events on the campus, including an incident in which white students hung nooses from a tree on the Jena High School campus.
Activists have said the charges against the Jena 6 are disproportionate to their crime and show racial discrimination by police and the courts.
“There’s Jena, Louisianas all over the United States,” said Sherman Mitchell, president of the SCLC Victorville chapter. “Jena was a wake-up call. Pete Knight High School has been demonstrating discrimination for years.”
Ali said the comparison between the events in Jena and Palmdale is apt because both showcase discrimination against black students.
“We’re calling them the Palmdale 4,” he said of the three students and one parent who were arrested during last week’s melee. “This is a national story. It struck a nerve.”
The Antelope Valley Union High School District released a statement Friday saying that the situation was under investigation.
“The district has launched an ongoing investigation into the actions of individuals involved in the disturbance and an employee of the district has been placed on administrative leave pending the results of the investigation,” the statement said.
“As part of this investigation, the district is reviewing its policies, practices and procedures relative to security and campus disturbances.”
Officials at Pete Knight High School did not return calls.
Valley Press Staff Writer Titus Gee contributed to this story.
