How One Town Turned a Child’s ‘Cry For Help’ Into a Hate Crime
After three nooses were found in a bush in Evanston, Illinois, two children were vilified as racist. A family was driven out of their home. Now, over two years later, the parents reveal the truth.
(Photo by Lyndon French for The Free Press, illustration by The Free Press)
By Frannie Block
PREVIEW
There are some years people would like wiped from history—and who can blame them? Who can blame the newly sober for pretending now that the excesses of progressive reign from 2018 to 2024 never happened? Who can blame them for thinking those who were canceled, even wrongly canceled, still probably deserved it a little bit? It’s important to just move on and forget, to stop nitpicking. It was mostly right. Because if an entire wealthy, elite college town became convinced, let’s say, that white middle schoolers hung nooses to intimidate black teachers and students, if those children were smeared by the leaders of the school and the community, if protests were organized, and if a family had to leave town, there must have been at least a kernel of truth. It’s too destabilizing if it was entirely a lie. It’s too threatening.
In the proper telling of those years of progressive rage, there were no real victims at all. But of course there were victims. Here for the first time, parents of a boy from Evanston, Illinois, who were caught in a national maelstrom speak to Frannie Block about what happened when a conspiracy against their son became too big to fail. —Nellie Bowles
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