A 9-year-old black girl from Alabama has taken her own life after bullies taunted her with racial slurs at two different schools, according to her family.
9-year-old Alabama girl commits suicide after being bullied with racist taunts, family says https://t.co/fSr4nAPIiF pic.twitter.com/3Y6oS9Xt0f
— The Hill (@thehill) December 11, 2018
McKenzie Nicole Adams was a fourth grader at U.S. Jones Elementary School in Demopolis, AL — where she had transferred after her mother and grandmother told the school that she was being bullied at her previous school.
Jasmine Adams, McKenzie’s mother, told local CBS affiliate WIAT that the school system failed her daughter, who had reported the bullying. (RELATED: U.S. Suicide Rate Hits 50-Year Record In 2017, Contributing To Lower Life Expectancy)
“She told me that this one particular child was writing her nasty notes in class,” Adams explained. “It was just things you wouldn’t think a 9-year-old should know. And my baby to tell me some of the things they had said to her I was like where are they learning this from?”
The family believes the bullying stemmed from McKenzie’s friendship with a white boy whose parents often drove her to school. Her aunt, Eddwina Harris, told the Tuscaloosa News, “She was being bullied the entire school year, with words such as ‘kill yourself,’ ‘you think you’re white because you ride with that white boy,’ ‘you ugly,’ ‘black b-tch,’ ‘just die.'”
Alex Brasswell, the school’s attorney, noted that the case was still under investigation and said that grief counselors and crisis counselors would be made available for any students who needed to speak to them. “Certainly our hearts go out to the family and friends of McKenzie and her fellow students as well as her teachers,” Brasswell said.
WATCH: