Tennessee school district and Department of Justice reach agreement after investigation into student ‘slave auction’

A school district in the US state of Tennessee has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice after an investigation uncovered several cases of racial harassment.

The Justice Department launched an investigation into the Hawkins County School District in 2023 after the mother of a student most affected by the bullying filed a lawsuit. The investigation, based on Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, found that the district “has shown deliberate indifference to known racially motivated bullying in its schools, thereby violating the right to equal treatment of black students.”

“No student should have to endure mock slave auctions or racial slurs meant to recall a shameful time in our country’s history when Black people were treated as subhumans,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Racist harassment undermines a student’s ability to feel safe, destroys any hope of a supportive learning environment, and violates the Constitution’s most fundamental promise of equal treatment.”

The student, identified in the lawsuit as “KR,” was the victim of racial harassment 12 times during the 2021-22 school year, including “public humiliation in his school’s common areas.” One of the incidents described involved a “slave auction” in which KR was “sold” to the highest bidder.

As part of the agreement with the Department of Justice, the district will implement eight changes over the next few years, some of which include hiring a person to handle racial harassment complaints, updating racial harassment policies and training staff to recognize racial harassment.

“Our school system is – and always has been – focused on serving and protecting all students regardless of race,” said Hawkins County Schools Superintendent Matt Hixson. “As such, we have entered into an agreement with the Department of Justice to continue to pursue these goals, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Department in this regard in the future.”

Still, school district officials said they disagreed with the department’s findings. Hixson told the review that Hawkins County Schools “disagrees with the Department’s findings and conclusions regarding the allegations of racially motivated harassment and/or violence and does not believe that it or its representatives acted with willful indifference.”

In addition to the “slave auction,” the Justice Department also investigated other racist incidents, such as the repeated and open use of the N-word and a “monkey of the month” campaign that mocked black students.

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The mother of the child at issue in the lawsuit said the school knowingly tolerated KR’s racist harassment, thereby depriving him of his civil right to equal access to educational opportunities.

The school board agreed to a $110,000 settlement for mother and son in what was originally a $2.5 million lawsuit against the school district. Of that amount, $50,181 will be spent on legal fees and $59,819 will be deposited into an interest-bearing account to cover KR’s educational needs.