A white father rushed onto the stage and began to push the Black superintendent out of the way so he couldn’t shake his daughter’s hand during a high school graduation.
The incident happened on May 31 at Baraboo High School in Wisconsin. Footage from the graduation shows the father, whose identity is unknown to protect his daughter, come on stage. As his daughter was shaking other school officials’ hands, the father grabbed Superintendent Rainey Briggs and pushed him from his daughter.
The father is heard saying, “I don’t want her touching him.”
“You better get up off of me,” Briggs can be heard saying in the footage. School officials are then seen going towards the incident as the crowd watching everything unfold began to “boo.”
The father of a Baraboo High School student in Wisconsin storms the stage to stop a Black school district superintendent from shaking his daughter’s hand at her graduation ceremony.
But tell me again how we’ve never been a racist country.https://t.co/OQDbecHXuU pic.twitter.com/ZGJwMWyUMg
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 5, 2024
According to WiscNews, officers escorted the father off school property. Hailey Wagner, the Baraboo School District spokesperson, said they referred a disorderly conduct charge for the father to the Sauk County District Attorney’s Office.
Briggs was hired in 2021 to be the superintendent of the high school.
In 2o18, Baraboo High School was in the headlines after a picture was released of a group of current and former students doing the Nazi salute. The picture was reportedly not affiliated with the school or the school district.
