A thought-provoking and informative Black Lives Matter assembly was given to Bridgnorth Endowed students from Years 7 to 9 this week, with the compelling headline message that ‘Every Life Matters’.
Delivered by Head of House, Mr Akhtar, the talk opened with an audio track of an altercation between a woman and an African American man in New York’s Central Park, which students were asked to picture.
The woman sounds threatened, yet the video shows her as being highly confrontational towards the man, who’d politely asked her to follow park rules and put her dog on a lead in an area that’s home to lots of birds.
Taking a sinister turn, the incident then escalates into a disturbing racial attack as the woman goes on to call the police, saying “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life”.
The assembly then went on to highlight the ongoing issue of racism in society, with scenes of booing drowned out by applause as football players take the knee and the murder of George Floyd in police custody.
Rewinding almost 60 years, students were encouraged to go away and listen to the powerful words of Martin Luther King’s celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963, in which he called for true equality and an end to racism.
Finally, students were left with one simple thought – that they will all come across racism in their lives and need to decide what they will do. They can either be part of it, ignore it, or stand up and say it’s wrong.
