The class gave a group presentation, then divided into nine groups, each of which covered the story of an African-American citizen killed at the hands of law enforcement.
Over 230 attendees rotated through the students’ mini-presentations, then gathered again to reflect.
Cone decided racial issues would be the class focus this year due to the prevalence of the issue.
“Racism is all around us, but we don’t talk about it much,” Cone said. “People say we talk about race too much — but if you ask them what they mean, they don’t really know.”
In addition to extensive research, students conducted their own interviews. The group that studied Eric Garner — whose chokehold death by a Staten Island, New York, police officer prompted national outrage in July 2014 — interviewed his mother, among others involved.
CHS junior Lily Ervin was part of the group who researched Terence Crutcher, an African-American man fatally shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in September. Ervin said talking to lawyers from the prosecution and defense enhanced her understanding.
“It really helped us throughout our research,” she said. “Through the disputes the lawyers had, we could get a sense of what was really happening and why the trial was taking so long. It also helped us sense the role race played in the case.”
Ervin’s group member, CHS junior Amado Ruiz-Perez, said the class taught him about racism’s evolution throughout history, from Jim Crow laws, to segregation, to lynching, to mass incarceration.
