After a rock near South Pointe High School in Rock Hill, South Carolina, was vandalized over the weekend with hate speech, students at the school are responding with a message of hope and equality.
This past Sunday — the first day of Black History Month — a school custodian noticed that someone had painted a racial slur on a large rock on the high school campus. The custodian quickly painted over the rock, but images of it were already circulating on social media, Elaine Baker, director of information services for Rock Hill Schools, told The Huffington Post.
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Notably, the district recently celebrated a group of civil rights activists known as the Friendship Nine. In 1961, these nine African-American activists were arrested after they attempted to dine at a whites-only lunch counter in Rock Hill. For their crimes, they served 30 days of hard labor. Last week, a judge cleared the conviction from the activists’ records.
“We had a big celebration in Rock Hill that [the arrests] wouldn’t happen now and shouldn’t have happened at all,” said Baker. “Whoever put this racial slur on the rock was somebody who decided that they don’t want to send a message like that, or who wanted to tarnish the successes that we have had.”
