A White Supremacist Murdered Two At My Supermarket: Kentucky teacher speaks out against racist violence and the school-to-prison-pipeline
In October, two Black grandparents were gunned down by a white supremacist in a Kroger supermarket in Louisville, Kentucky, sending shock waves through the Black community.
The shooter was recorded on surveillance video trying to get into a predominately Black church just before the killing. Michelle Randolph, who teaches fourth grade in a school with a majority of Black and immigrant students in Jefferson County, Kentucky, lives in the neighborhood and shops at the Kroger that was targeted.
Randolph helped organize the over 5,000 Kentucky educators who shut down schools in 30 counties and rallied with students, parents and unionists on the state Capitol for education funding. Kentucky educators were part of the “Red State Revolt,” which included strikes that shut schools down in more than five states dominated by Republican legislatures — including West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and North Carolina — and won many millions of extra dollars in education spending for their school districts.
, a Seattle high school ethnic studies teacher and co-editor of the book Teaching for Black Lives, interviewed Michelle on the fight against racism and the struggle for education in an article that first appeared in Socialist Worker.
Jesse: Thanks for taking the time to talk after a long day in the classroom.
Michelle: My pleasure.
Jesse: I wanted to first ask you about the recent escalation of racist, hateful violence. There were the mail bombs sent to political opponents of Trump. Then there was the attack on the synagogue that killed 11 people, which has been called the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. And in the midst of these, there was the racist killing of two Black grandparents in Kentucky, Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones, while they were doing their weekly shopping at the Kroger supermarket. Tell me about the Continue reading: A White Supremacist Murdered Two At My Supermarket: Kentucky teacher speaks out against racist violence and the school-to-prison-pipeline – I AM AN EDUCATOR
