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Tuesday, June 22, 1999
Fight sparks a racial rift
By BARBARA WALSH
Staff Writer
Copyright © 1999 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
LEE — No one spoke as the janitor tried to scrub the hate from the wall. The students, some white, some Indian, stood silently, their eyes focused on the bold black letters painted on the wall before them.
"Indians suck. White Power." Someone had also written "dead" next to the names of two Indian boys. A few students cried as the janitor erased the ugly words.
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The trouble had started with a fight between two boys, one white, one Indian.
The hallway brawl had nothing to do with skin color. It began over a girl. But when the punching and shoving was over, there was blood, puddles of it, on the worn hardwood floor. The white boy had a broken nose, and when word got out that an Indian boy had beaten a white student, things turned ugly.
A couple dozen white boys gathered on the lawn outside the school and at the corner pizza shop. They talked about getting even with the Indians. Kids boasted they had knives. They threatened to get guns.
Someone pulled a tire iron from the trunk of his car. They agreed it was time to show those Indians who was boss. It was time they learned their place. Indians shouldn't be going to school with white kids anyway.
Before the day was over, police would be called and classes would be cancelled. The Indian kids would be bused home to their reservations with a police escort, and friendships would be forever changed at this academy tucked in the middle of a small central Maine town.
"It was like a veil came down over the Indian kids' eyes," remembers guidance counselor Kendra Ritchie. "You could see fear. Mistrust. They thought they were accepted here. Now, they didn't know who their friends were."
Indian kids grow up hearing stories about hate. They hear them from their parents and grandparents.
 Kyla Moore, in her sister Leah's dorm room at Lee Academy, found her white friends avoiding her after a fight between a white and an Indian student. Staff photo by John Ewing |
Over the years, the Passamaquoddys searched for schools that would nurture their children and encourage them to stay in school. In the early 1970s, Lee Academy offered to take the Indian students and promised to teach Indian history and culture in their classes.
As generations of Indian students attended the academy, they grew comfortable enough to share their culture. They built a drum out of a pine tree and moose hide. They danced and drummed for the Lee students.
During one performance for the entire school, the Indian kids received rousing cheers. Ritchie got chills. She knew the Indian students considered drumming and dancing sacred. To share these ceremonial rites meant they felt accepted by their white peers. "This is a major breakthrough," she told herself.
The hallways at Lee Academy were still and quiet just before lunch on Feb. 11, a bitterly cold Thursday morning.
 Lee Academy students Victoria Nute and Renee Nicholas look at Laura Currier's senior pictures. White and Indian students traditionally mixed well at the school, but a fight last winter took on racial overtones. Currier is a member of the school's civil rights team. Staff photo by John Ewing |
Then he heard two male voices, loud and angry. "Bring it on," one shouted.
Teachers rushed to break up the fight. A message crackled over the academy's intercom system: "Please stay in your classrooms until further notice."
It didn't take long for word of the fight to spread through the hallways and classrooms. News about the Indian kid busting the white boy's nose also made its way to the corner pizza shop, Krapf's.
Christine Krapf stood inside the restaurant's kitchen, helping her parents make pizzas and sandwiches. She heard shouting and whooping.
She stepped outside and saw a crowd of 20 white boys. Two of the leaders were known troublemakers. One had been suspended from the academy; the other, an 18-year-old, didn't even go the school.
Christine heard the students shouting: "Those Indians better get over here. We hate those . . . Indians. We're going to kill them."
The boys whooped, mimicking Indians they'd seen on old television movies.
Christine herself was a junior at the academy. She had grown up playing with the Passamaquoddy kids who boarded at the dorm a few houses down from her parents' restaurant. She'd become fond of some of the Indian students. Now she worried for their safety.
Christine watched as some of the students ran toward the side of the academy's red-brick building. "Let's get those Indians," one of them shouted.
 Guidance counselor Kendra Ritchie feared a brawl spoke to a deeper problem: racial hatred. Staff photo by John Ewing |
Concerned about more violence, a teacher called the cops. The Indian boys were ushered into a classroom for their safety. Three male teachers stood guard.
Students gathered on the lawn outside the academy. The white kids stood on the left; the Indian girls on the right. Tenee Seeley noticed the segregation as she walked toward the academy building. She'd never seen the students separate before.
Tenee overhead one girl tell her friends: "All the Indians should be killed. They should be kicked out."
Tenee knew this girl. They'd often talked in class and in the hallway about boys, about school.
Tenee headed to her English class confused about this sudden hate. She looked around the room at the students. All of them were white. Many of their faces were pinched with anger.
Tenee listened to them talk. "Wait till we see him again. We're going to kill him. We're going to get those squaws too. They always start the fights."
The room suddenly felt too hot. Tenee's stomach tightened, like something was jumping around inside. She told the teacher she was leaving.
In the basement, another Indian student struggled with a discovery of his own. Someone had painted a message of hate on a wall in the senior lounge, a room where students hung out between classes and during their study halls.
A week earlier, seniors had written their names on the wall. Now, someone had painted "dead" next to two Indian boys' names. The vandal also wrote "Indians Suck" and "White Power." The Indian boy ran upstairs to find Kendra Ritchie, the guidance counselor.
Ritchie's stomach soured as she listened to the student. She saw something change in his eyes as he told her what he'd found. She could see fear, caution, confusion.
Ritchie had her own questions. She'd discounted the fight as a brawl over a girl. But now these words frightened her. Ritchie knew prejudice and bigotry could sometimes be fatal.
 Kristin Loman discusses the fight last winter and the racial tension that followed at Lee Academy. White and Indian students felt friendships strained by the conflict. Staff photo by John Ewing |
Soon after the threatening message was found, the principal closed the school and cancelled classes the following day. The Indian students were sent to their dorms and told to pack their belongings. Buses were called to take them home to the reservations.
Like most of the Passamaquoddy students, Leah and Kyla Moore anxiously stuffed clothing in their bags. Leah, a freshman, at the school, had seen blood on hallway floor after the fight and now she was scared. She didn't know why the Indians were being sent home a day early. Had somebody else been hurt?
Kyla, her older sister, had attended the academy for three years. She sang in the chorus and played basketball. She had made plenty of white friends at the school. But that day some of those white friends wouldn't even look at her. "How could one fight make people think so differently?" she thought.
Some of the Indian students packed everything they owned, believing they might never come back.
As they walked toward the bus, the group of white boys who had shouted angry threats stood by the school's tiny white steeple-less church.
Tenee Seeley noticed them as she walked quickly to the bus. The principal walked by her side. "He's acting like our bodyguard," Tenee thought.
Tenee kept her head down. She felt stupid, humiliated. Other Indian students had their eyes on the ground too. A few stared straight ahead; their eyes dulled, like they'd been without sleep for many nights.
 Students leave for lunch from Lee Academy in March, six weeks after a hallway fight between a white and an Indian student which deepened into a racial conflict that left some Indian kids wondering who their friends were. Staff photo by John Ewing |
A few days later, at the start of winter vacation, the Lee Academy principal, teachers and students on the school's civil rights team traveled to Pleasant Point. They met with parents and tribal officials, ensuring them that their children would be safe at the school.
Hate and prejudice would not be tolerated at the academy, they said.
"We're sorry this happened," said Laura Currier, one of the civil rights team members. "We're doing the best we can to fix this. You're not alone. We care about you."
But still parents and students had plenty of concern. Mothers and fathers feared that their children might get hurt. Maybe, they'd even get dragged off in some stranger's car as they walked to their dorms at night. "I'm scared to go back," Kyla Moore said, crying.
At the end of spring vacation week, most of the students decided they liked the school too much to quit. Four students, including the Indian boy who was in the fight, decided not to go back.
It was quiet the first day back at the academy. A Penobscot County deputy patrolled the hallways.
Kyla Moore found herself cautious, careful about who she talked to, who she walked to classes with. Some of the white students still wouldn't look her in the eye.
To reassure the students that no fights, words or racial acts would be tolerated, the academy scheduled an assembly.
 Christina Krapf works at her parents' pizza restaurant, a hangout for Lee Academy students. She saw a crowd of white boys shouting racial slurs and threatening Indians. Staff photo by John Ewing |
Later that day, Tenee saw the white girl who had wished that all Indians should be killed and kicked out of school.
The girl apologized to Tenee. "I'm sorry for saying that stuff. I didn't mean you guys should be killed. It just came out because I was mad."
"Just think about what you say next time," Tenee told her.
The two girls agreed there were no hard feelings. But Tenee still feels a little strange around her. They don't talk much anymore.
"I'm not sure they understand that they said something mean, something that hurt," she says. "You'll always remember the things that they said. Even if it's just one little name, you'll always remember that.
"You can forgive them," she added, "but you'll always remember."