Students from A Philip Randolph, Bread & Roses Academy, Central Park East Secondary, Frederick Douglass Academy I, Frederick Douglass Academy II, Manhattan Center, Thurgood Marshall Academy, Urban Peace Academy, Wadleigh Secondary, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School participated in a cipher that featured Randall Kennedy’s Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.
After reviewing the history of the word, students put the word on trial.
In this dramatization they were called to address the use of the word in literature, the media, school, and on the street. Who knew J-Lo, Aaron McGruder and Al Sharpton would all be called to testify?