She Was Banned From Wearing a Black Lives Matter T-Shirt, So Her Classmates Walked Out

Students at an Arizona high school walked out of class Monday morning in protest that the school had banned a sophomore girl from wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt.

Mariah Harvard, a 10th-grade student at Buckeye Union High School, wrote in a Facebook post with more than 2,000 shares that the school’s vice principal asked her to remove her Black Lives Matter T-shirt because it created “a disruption in the learning of education.”

The vice principal asked Harvard to change into a plain white T-shirt because of a previous argument she had with “a young caucasian boy who said ‘black lives don’t matter’ and ‘that shirt is meaningless,'” Harvard wrote.

Harvard was joined by nine other students, their parents and representatives of civil rights organizations on Monday as they gathered outside the school in demonstration, the Arizona Republic reported.

In a statement, the Buckeye Union High School District said it was working with staff, local leaders and Black Lives Matters representatives to “turn the incident involving the black lives matter T-shirt from a negative situation into a positive learning experience.”