Five whites suspended after racial message appears in high school yearbook in Connecticut

Jet, July 3, 1995

Five White high school students in the mostly White community of Greenwich, CT, have been suspended and will not graduate with their class after allegedly carrying out a plan to print a series of random-looking letters under their yearbook photograph captions which together spell out a message of racial hatred.

Greenwich High School officials say the students conspired months ago to plant the words and letters that together read "kill all niggers."

The letters and words did not seem odd because seniors get to write the captions under their yearbook photos-which often include inside jokes and messages.

At the end of a caption under one student's picture appeared the word "kill." Under a second was the word ALL." The third, fourth and fifth captions end: "ni,"gg" "ERS."

The message was discovered after some of the five students boasted to friends, school Superintendent John Whritner said.

Lawyers for the students say all five have agreed to forego graduation exercises regardless of whether on-going negotiations allow them to be reinstated before commencement ceremonies.

However, the Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, said his office would be pursuing both criminal and civil charges under the state's hate-crime statute.

"This outrageous act of bigotry and bias is a direct affront to the entire educational system," Blumenthal said. He added, "A message should be sent to anyone inclined to excuse or condone this kind of revolting conduct."

He warned residents against viewing the act as "an innocent, youthful prank," saying it has done tremendous damage.

The students could face imprisonment and fines if convicted under the hate-crime statute, which was enacted in 1989 and expanded this year to allow individuals to seek civil sanctions.

Published reports indicate the students were popular athletes on the school's football and baseball teams. The students are Keith Dianis, Ed Oberbeck, Patrick Fox, Aaron Valenti and Robert Texiere.

"I truly think they were proud of what they did," said Leslie Addy, a junior at the school who is Black. "The scary thing is they would have gotten away with it if they hadn't bragged."

Camar Graves, a Black senior student who will be attending Yale next year, told NBC "Today" Show's Katie Couric he was "appalled just like everybody else" when he learned of the incident.

"...These kids were calling for the killing of an entire group of people... some people just saw it as mere words, but mere words have played a big role in history. I mean, Hitler began with just mere words, but ended in the holocaust. It is mere words that turn into bad ideas that turn into harmful actions."

The school is hoping to reprint the yearbook without the racist message, a school official said. About 1,200 yearbooks had been printed at a cost of more than $50,000, administrators said. Greenwich, a wealthy suburb of Connecticut, is about 3 percent Black.