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Mom Sues Mississippi School For Bias Against Her Valedictorian Daughter
CLEVELAND, MS —— The mother of a Black student has filed a federal lawsuit against a Mississippi school district claiming her daughter was discriminated against when she was forced to share the school’s valedictorian title with a white classmate, whose grade point average was inferior.
Jasmine Shepard and a white student were named “co-valedictorians” the day before they graduated from Cleveland High School in Cleveland, Miss., according to the suit filed last Tuesday, the Washington Post reports.
Shepard is the school’s
Jasmine Shepard was made to share her valedicto- rian status with a white stu- dent. She was the first Black in the school’s history.
first black valedictorian, ac- cording to the suit.
An attorney for the Cleve- land School District called the suit “frivolous,” and claimed the students “had identical grade point aver- ages.”
Jasmine’s mother, Sherry Shepard, said it was easy to calculate her daughter’s classmate’s grade point average.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that it had failed to de- segregate its schools approx- imately 50 years after being ordered to do so. The judge ordered the schools in the district to be integrated.
St. Louis High School Students Do Temporary Fix To Emmett Till Memorial
MONEY, MS —- A group of high school students on a so- cial justice jaunt across the country helped to restore dig- nity to a defaced Emmett Till memorial, after they came across it in Money, Miss., last week.
The Washington Post re- ports that the group of 24 students, part of the St. Louis-based Cultural Leader- ship program, traveled the country for three weeks learning about civil rights and meeting with notable fig- ures such as Rep. John
Lewis and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Gins- burg.
On June 25, near a grocery store where 14-year-old Till allegedly “took liberties” in speaking with a white woman (she admitted lying years later), a sign commemorating his short life and horrific death had been defaced. Text and photographs had been removed from the sign, simi- lar to the destruction of an- other sign by the river where Till’s lynched, mutilated body was found.
The Post reports that the group debated about what ac- tion to take before settling on repairing the sign with hand- written notes and drawings, and also speaking out about what had happened to the sign itself.
One of the student’s signs read, “You can destroy this marker, but you cannot de- stroy history.”
Another drew a picture of Till and posted it to the me- morial. “I thought it was im- portant to show he was just a little boy,” said 17-year-old Josh Hagene.
Fired Doctor Goes On ‘Revenge’ Shooting Spree At Bronx Hospital
BRONX, NY —- Hellbent on revenge and armed with an as- sault rifle, a former Bronx- Lebanon Hospital physician wearing a white lab coat opened fire last Friday inside the medical center — killing one doctor and injuring six other people before killing himself, authorities said.
The shooter, Dr. Henry Bello, 45, had vowed to get back at his former co-workers more than two years ago shortly before he was forced to resign over accusations of sex- ual harassment.
Bello sent an email hours before the shooting explaining he felt his former colleagues turned their backs on him.
“This hospital terminated my road to a licensure to prac- tice medicine,” the email said. “First, I was told it was be- cause I always kept to myself. Then it was because of an al- tercation with a nurse.” He also blamed a doctor for block- ing his chances at practicing medicine.
Bello — wearing a lab coat to cloak his AR-15 — fired at his former colleagues on the hospital’s 16th floor around 2 P.M. on Friday.
Dr. Henry Bello was fired 2 years ago, and vowed he would kill his colleagues.
With cops closing in, Bello’s shooting spree ended one floor above — after he turned the weapon on himself, police said.
Bello had also tried to start a fire at the nurses' station on the 16th floor, but the hospi- tal’s sprinkler system put out the small blaze. Before shoot- ing himself, he also tried to light himself on fire, cops said.
Bello’s body was found sprawled across a hallway floor near that of a female vic- tim — identified as Dr. Tra- cye Sin-Yee Tam, 32. It was not clear if Bello knew her, who was, like him, a family medicine doctor.
Arrest Made In Road Rage Shooting That Left Recent HS Grad Dead
Bianca Roberson was fatally shot by David Desper in a road rage incident.
The Emmett Till Memorial was vandalized on June 25th. A group of students from Missouri did a temporary fix to the marker to express their sentiments about his tragic death in 1955 and the de- struction of the sign.
GOSHEN TOWNSHIP, PA —- After a two-day manhunt, a 28-year-old Pennsylvania man was arrested Sunday and charged with murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old Bianca Roberson.
David Desper of Trainer, Pa., turned himself in at 2 a.m. and was arraigned on first-de- gree murder, along with other charges in Roberson’s death.
In what is being described as a “road rage” incident, Roberson, who was planning to attend Jacksonville Univer- sity in Florida this fall, was shot in the head last Wednes-
day in West Goshen Town- ship, Pa., after she tried to merge into a lane at the same time as Desper, who was driving a red pickup truck.
Roberson died instantly, and police found her car and body in a ditch on the side of the road.
Desper reportedly had a permit for the 40-caliber semi-automatic handgun used in the killing, which he bought in November 2015.
Chester County District At- torney Thomas Hogan said Sunday that the murder was not racially motivated.
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