Heather Sheppard of Essex Junction, a mother of four and an on-air personality at the Light Radio, yesterday send this letter to the Essex-Westford School District Board. The school district plans to raise the BLM flag on August 6. Reprinted with her permission. Above, Painting of Booker T. Washington in his historic dinner October 16, 1901 dinner with President Teddy Roosevelt at the White House. Photo credit Booker T. Washington Society Facebook Page – Editor

Regarding the matter of raising flags at our public schools.

I was raised (as an orphan with my baby brother) by my single grandmother on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma, lived among Black friends in troubled Ferguson Missouri, and am honored to be a surrogate mom for a young black man who lost his adoptive mother. I rally for black lives, raise funds for black lives, support young black youth.

And I urge you to not fly the BLM flag. Its goals and methods are actually detrimental to necessary reform. 

In my experience, Black Americans need access to better education. Yet BLM says little about this. There’s no BLM group marching for charter schools. 

Barack Obama has said black people need stronger families, and especially present fathers, to stop the slaughter of teenage gang members by each other. Yet BLM (according to one national charter) would “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” That doesn’t sound promising for our endangered young men.

Black people need a thriving small business culture. Yet BLM rioters have unapologetically destroyed the entrepreneurial dreams of many of those they claim to be “helping.”

If any flag must fly below Old Glory, right here in Essex Junction is the Vermont headquarters of the Booker T. Washington Society, promoting learning among Black people. There’s even a BTWS high school chapter. If there’s no flag yet, I’ll make it or I and some friends will proudly pay to have one made. In fact, it would make a great school project. 

Please know that from the moment your school board opts to fly a BLM flag that teaches our children that rioting not listening is the desired path to improving society,  there will be an earnest, organized petition drive to honor racial justice with one more fitting. 

Heather M. Sheppard

Essex Junction VT