Racist Letter Discovered At Seaholm High School
BIRMINGHAM, Mich. (WWJ) - A racist letter was discovered in a classroom at Birmingham Seaholm High School -- and it spelled out a connection to the nationwide uproar over the Trayvon Martin shooting.
The letter singled out three staff members and a student who are black, all with the same last name as Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager shot to death by a neighborhood watch volunteer. The principal of Seaholm High School is promising to find the person responsible for the letter, with police aiding in the investigation.
The school, meanwhile, is still trying to heal from a similar incident last year. That's when a now former student was charged with ethnic intimidation for spraying racist graffiti on one of the school's bathroom walls.
The last incident ended in affluent Birmingham when a black student, Courtney Thomas, was sentenced to one year probation and 100 hours of community service after admitting he wrote the graffiti. Police said Thomas told the school about the racially tinged graffiti, using the n-word and the names of five African-American students at Birmingham Seaholm High School – including his own – next to words "should be lynched," and "I'm going to kill them."
He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
The Trayvon Martin case referenced in the latest batch of graffiti is drawing national attention after a Hispanic man shot a young black teenager to death because he thought he looked "suspicious" walking through his neighborhood. Martin was armed with an iced tea and a bag of Skittles he had just picked up at a nearby convenience store when he was shot.
His killer, who stayed at the scene and outlined what happened, has not been charged with a crime.
