Kids Just Say The Darndest Things!
A home-schooled seven-year-old incites Westchester middle- and high-school students to rise up:
Posted: March 13th, 2006 | Filed under: You're Kidding, Right?A 7-year-old prodigy unleashed a firestorm when she recited a poem she wrote comparing Christopher Columbus and Charles Darwin to “pirates” and “vampires” who robbed blacks of their identities and human rights.
Hundreds of parents of Peekskill middle- and high-school students received a recorded phone message last week apologizing for little Autum Ashante’s poem, titled “White Nationalism Put U in Bondage.”
“Black lands taken from your hands, by vampires with no remorse,” the aspiring actress and poet wrote. “They took the gold, the wisdom and all the storytellers. They took the black women, with the black man weak. Made to watch as they changed the paradigm of our village.
“Yeah white nationalism is what put you in bondage. Pirates and vampires like Columbus, Morgan and Darwin.”
. . .
Autum, who is home-schooled in Mount Vernon and speaks several languages, prefaced her performance at the high school with a Black Panthers’ pledge asking black youngsters to not harm one another.
It did not sit well with parents.