'Slave' Assignment Upsets Schoolchildren, Parents in Melvindale

MELVINDALE, Mich. (WJBK) -- It's a homework assignment that one student says made him feel embarrassed to be black. Now some parents are pushing their kids to take a failing grade.

A social studies teacher at Strong Middle School in Melvindale issued the assignment to sixth graders asking kids to describe what their life would be like as a slave.

"She wanted you to write a journal about your master, what he looked like and how would you escape if you were a slave," Taylan Gibson explained.

How Taylan says this homework assignment made him feel was enough to break his mother's heart.

"Made me embarrassed to be black," he told us.

"It upset him. It humiliated him. It made him feel embarrassed and ashamed to be who he is," said Jessica Gibson, Taylan's mother.

So, she overruled the school's decision and told her son not to do the assignment. She says she's not the only one.

"It's white parents also. He's got white friends. Their parents feel the same way. This is too much," Jessica Gibson remarked.

She says the school refuses to give her son a different assignment.

"The principal, I talked to her. Her comment was 'They have to teach African children their history,'" Jessica Gibson explained.

11-year-old Jordan Beer received the same assignment in another class. He says he was scared to tell his mom about it.

"I was scared it might hurt her because it [hurt] me," he said.

Jessica Gibson says she's been contacted by journalists across the country asking her questions about this homework assignment.

The district's superintendent told us they would not be releasing a comment on the assignment.