A former North Carolina teacher sued a North Carolina public school in federal court, alleging that he was fired from his job for teaching students the novel Dear Martin about racial justice after white parents complained.
On Monday, June 12th, Markayle Gray sued Charlotte Secondary School Inc. in North Carolina in federal court Monday. The allegations include that Gray was fired because of his race as the school caved to concerns from white parents that Dear Martin was too politically motivated. Gray was hired to teach English during the 2022-2023 academic year as a nontenured contract employee.
According to the complaint, “Gray became another casualty of the book-banning sweeping American public education. He was fired, and the principal of Charlotte Secondary all but admitted to him, because of a racially inspired backlash over his teaching of an award
winning, a mainstream novel about a black teenager’s struggle to grasp racial
injustice.”
The book, by Nic Stone, which charted on The New York Times bestseller list was written after the racially charged events after the 2012 murder of Jordan Davis- a 17-year-old who was killed by a white man who did not like he played his music loud and the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown.
Gray alleges that “in the latter part of 2022 and early 2023, Gray obtained permission from
Rock to build a lesson plan for his 7th Grade honors track class around the novel,
“Dear Martin.” The plan was designed to be a centerpiece of Gray’s Black History
Month activities for his students, and was initially assigned during January 2023.”
In January 2023, some white parents began to raise complaints to administrators at Charlotte Secondary that the content in “Dear Martin” was divisive and injected what they regarded as unwelcome political views on systemic racial inequality into their children’s classroom.”
On February 2, 2023, Gray was informed by the school’s principal, Keisha Rock, that his contract was being terminated effective immediately. The ostensible grounds, he was told, was the emergence of parental opposition over “Dear Martin” and other aspects of Gray’s teaching content related to racial equality. As Rock stated, “I cannot address complaints made by parents all day.” Rock told Gray that she had been in constant communication with the Board of Directors and had also received parental complaints regarding Gray and that the Board had authorized his immediate termination.
Charlotte Secondary has a student population that is approximately 80-85% black, Hispanic, or biracial, but its teaching pool is split evenly between whites
and people of color.
Representatives of Gray and the school did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
