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‘Colored only' signs at school draw outrage, GA parents say. District responds

‘Colored only' signs at school draw outrage, GA parents say. District responds

Miami Herald24-04-2025

A Georgia school district is investigating after parents raised concerns over segregation-era signs displayed inside an Atlanta-area elementary school, news outlets reported.
Signs reading 'For Whites Only' and 'For Colored Only' were reportedly posted in a cafeteria and above water fountains at Honey Creek Elementary School in Conyers, parents told WSB-TV.
School leaders explained the signs were part of an unapproved social studies activity, but it did little to quell public scrutiny, WXIA reported.
Parents voiced their concerns at a recent Rockdale County School Board meeting, prompting district leaders to take a closer look at the incident, the station reported.
In a statement, Rockdale County Public Schools said it has taken 'appropriate action to address the reported information' but declined to comment on the matter further, according to WANF.
Principal Adriene Lanier addressed the incident in a letter to parents on April 23, saying it involved a social studies lesson on civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, WSB-TV reported. Bridges was the first Black child to desegregate William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.
'The district provides teachers with curriculum documents that include recommended and vetted resources and activities,' Lanier said, as reported by the station. 'In this instance, the teacher did not adhere to the approved resources or recommended lessons provided by the district.'
It's not clear if the teacher will face disciplinary action.
McClatchy News reached out to Rockdale County Public Schools for more information April 24 but didn't immediately hear back.
District leaders said the teacher had no ill intent but acknowledged the classroom lesson wasn't appropriate, according to WXIA.
In a statement, The Georgia NAACP said it was 'deeply disturbed' by the incident and argued that the signage evoked a 'painful legacy of segregation and racial injustice.'
'We call upon the Rockdale County School District to take swift and transparent action — not only to hold those involved accountable but to implement district-wide anti-racism education, cultural competency training for staff and students, and spaces for open dialogue led by trusted community leaders,' the organization said.
Conyers is about a 20-mile drive southeast from downtown Atlanta.

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Texas Methodist Foundation's Grants Ministry Awards $1.0 million to 31 Churches and Nonprofits Across Texas and New Mexico

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Texas Methodist Foundation's Grants Ministry Awards $1.0 million to 31 Churches and Nonprofits Across Texas and New Mexico
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Why is Gen Z getting more religious? We asked them.
Why is Gen Z getting more religious? We asked them.

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It's an institution that shaped me: It's where I made a lot of friends, it gave me my first taste of public speaking, and since pastors in my denomination are moved from church to church, it also determined what city I lived in and where I went to school. When I was a kid, attendance was obviously less in my control. If I didn't go to church on Sunday, that meant no hanging with friends the following week. 'If you can't make time for the Lord, how can you make time for something else?' was my mother's refrain. The choice is mine now. I enjoy hearing the songs that were the soundtrack for so much of my childhood. I like saying hello to the people I see week after week. I like the Black liberation theology interpretation of the Bible that I hear every Sunday. And my experience, it turns out, is not unique. As we discussed in the most recent episode of Explain It to Me, Vox's call-in podcast, Gen Z has been finding religion these last few years. It's a phenomenon that reverses some recent trends — and one for which experts are trying to find an explanation. The changing face of religion in America It's a development that Ryan Burge has been keeping his eye on. He was a Baptist pastor for 20 years, and now he's an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. Burge stepped away from ministry because the attendance in his church was declining: Members were aging, and there weren't a lot of young people to keep it alive. 'It's almost like every year, you expect [the share of Christians in the country] to be one point lower than the prior year, or two points lower than the prior year,' Burge told me. 'Every generation is less Christian than the prior generation, going all the way back to the early 1900s. And what's fascinating is that the drop is very consistent.' According to Burge, Catholicism is seeing a huge rise in young men. Now, though, Burge says that not only is that decline tapering off, but 'on some metrics, this data says that young people are actually more likely to be weekly religious attenders than millennials are. This is huge — we've never seen that before. We always assumed religion's going to continue to decline, and it doesn't look like that decline is continuing.' When we asked Explain It to Me listeners about their own experiences with spirituality, we got a wide array of responses. 'I did not grow up going to church. My family never went to church when I was younger, but I always had questions and felt like something bigger was out there,' one listener told us. 'So as soon as I could drive myself, I went to church and started looking for those answers.' Another — a self-described 'cradle Catholic' who has made her way back to religion — called in to say that, 'I understand why a lot of young people are actually going back to religion. 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