Most kids, when they get the option to choose a historical figure for a history project, choose people like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X or Barack Obama.
One freshman in high school decided to choose former Ku Klux Klan leader Hiram Wesley Evans as his “historical figure.”
With his teacher’s approval, the unidentified student was able to wear the infamous white-hooded outfit to school. The student body of Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy in Wilmington, Calif., is 96 percent minority, and it came as a surprise to many of the students when they saw the boy outside his history class.
“It kind of rattled me. It was hard to believe that [the teacher—who was also unidentified] would allow a Klansman to walk around from her approval. So we asked her, and she ... compared the Klan to the Black Panther Party, which in my opinion are two different things,” rising senior Trinity Young said, according to KABC-TV.
Another rising senior, Eliza Dumag, felt unsafe and threatened during the incident.
“I’m honestly questioning why she would think it was OK. I mean, sure, he was a historical figure, but is that really a historical figure you want roaming around the school? It’s not right. It made me feel like unsafe and threatened,” she said.
A district spokeswoman with the Los Angeles Unified School District said that the incident is being investigated, and called the costume “insensitive and highly inappropriate.”