If you’ve ever been to a high school graduation, or any graduation for that matter, you know that the atmosphere is wonderfully celebratory. Families often cheer and clap when their loved one walks across the stage to accept their coveted diploma, and it’s no big deal. Everyone is happy, right? Wrong. A father, along with three other family members, are facing criminal charges for having the audacity to cheer when his daughter walked across the stage at her Mississippi high school’s graduation ceremony.
Before the graduation ceremony at Senatobia High School on May 21, Superintendent Jay Foster asked the crowd to hold their applause until the end or they would be asked to leave. When 18-year-old, Lanarcia Walker, accepted her diploma, her family was so excited for her that they leapt up and cheered for her. Henry Walker, her father, yelled out,””You did it, baby!” Her aunt, Ursula Miller, screamed her name. Unfortunately, they and two other family members were immediately escorted from the building for their disruptive completely normal behavior.
You’d think that would be the end of it, but this is the Deep South we’re talking about. About a week after the graduation gone wrong, Foster filed charges against the family members:
It’s crazy,” Henry Walker said. “The fact that I might have to bond out of jail, pay court costs, or a $500 fine for expressing my love, it’s ridiculous, man. It’s ridiculous.
Each faces a $500 bond, court costs and possible jail time; all for cheering on their loved one at a graduation ceremony.
Now, I’m not saying Superintendent Foster is a racist, but it just so happens that he’s white and the family he targeted is black; add the fact that it’s Mississippi, and it doesn’t look so good.
This family did absolutely nothing that the rest of us haven’t done at one time or another. It’s unbelievably ridiculous that they are now facing jail time for celebrating at a celebration! What a waste of police and court resources.
Watch:
Featured image via Al.com
Insane, if I was there and knew her. I’d have been cheering too. This from a white almost 71 year old. And, NO senility is part of the equation.
No cheering, screaming out graduates names, or using airhorns were all the rules when my kids graduated from high school. The kids were told about it before graduation, the crowd was told about it at the event. It has nothing to do with race, it has to do with being disruptive and preventing the family of the next person in line to graduate from HEARING their own child’s name called. They were wrong to act as they did, they should have been thrown out. I don’t know about the fines-but I am guessing there is more to that story.