Classes in Decatur’s three high schools were closed for a second straight day Tuesday courtesy of the showdown between Rev. Jesse Jackson and the local school board over the expulsion of seven students.
The controversy escalated Tuesday morning with the filing of criminal charges against the youths stemming from a Sept. 17 football game at Decatur’s Eisenhower High School. Four of the young men were charged as adults with felony mob action and one of those youths, Roosevelt Fuller III, 18, also is accused of aggravated battery and resisting a peace officer. Five others, including two who were not students at the time of the fight, were charged in juvenile petitions, according to Macon County State’s Attorney Lawrence Fichter.
Jackson decried the filing of the charges, contending that the school board was working in tandem with law enforcement.
“They’re conspiring with the state’s attorney to criminalize these students to justify their actions,” said Jackson, who vowed to hold a church meeting Tuesday night to start a defense fund for the youths. “We will fight back.”
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About the same time those charges were being filed, Jackson was bringing the young men to Eisenhower, scene of the football game brawl. But Jackson chose not to test the police officers surrounding the school.
Jackson also said that his Rainbow Push Coalition would file suit in federal court Tuesday afternoon in Urbana challenging the expulsions, which the board on Monday night reduced from two years to one year and allowed the students to enroll in alternative programs where they could earn academic credit.
The Chicago civil-rights leader said his group also would ask a federal court for an emergency injunction blocking the board’s decision and allow the students back into classes immediately. He said depending on the judge’s response, he would decide whether to attend a regular board meeting Tuesday night and return to Eisenhower on Wednesday morning.
While neither Jackson nor any of the students were arrested, the morning air was thick with tension and one man was taken away in a squad car. The man, 39-year-old Mark Reynolds, whose 15-year-old daughter Amber is a sophomore at Eisenhower, said Jackson’s efforts in Decatur had further strained race relations.