‘What the Hell Is This?’: Outraged California Parents Call Out Elementary School for Including 1940s Article Containing ‘N—r Babies’ In Yearbook, Principal Offered to Put Sticker Over It
A newspaper clipping from the 1940s that contained racist language referring to Black children was published in a California elementary school yearbook, sparking outrage in the school community.
Montclair Elementary School in Oakland, California, recently printed and distributed its yearbooks for the 2024-2025 school year.
One portion of the book contains local newspaper articles from years past that feature the school’s events. A report from Oct. 1940 was a feature about the school’s annual carnival that year and the activities that children could participate in.
Just a few paragraphs in, the article stated, “Boy and Girl Scouts will have charge of booths and many attractions such as n—r babies, darts, fish pond, airplane game, fortune telling.”
According to the Jim Crow Museum, a game known as the African Dodger, which was also called “Hit the N—r Baby,” was commonplace at local fairs and carnivals throughout the late 19th century and into the 1940s. Several historical depictions show the game’s setup: a Black child or adult would stick their head through a curtain or large poster cutout while participants would throw eggs and baseballs at them.
Parents were furious that the article was included in the Montclair yearbook.
“I was mad. I was very upset,” Natalie Golden, the aunt of a student, told KGO.
“I was like, what the hell is this?” Brenda Mitchell, a student’s grandmother, said. “This is 2025… 1900s, what do the kids need to know about? Why would you bring that out? Why would you even put that in there? It was very inappropriate. Very inappropriate.”
The Montclair PTA historian emailed parents, confessing that she was the one who discovered the article.
“In my excitement, I made the critical error of only reading the first paragraph before including it,” her email read. She added that the four people on the volunteer yearbook team also failed to read the full article and catch the slur.
The PTA historian said she’s stepping down from her position.
Montclair Elementary Principal David Kloker sent an email to the school community apologizing and calling the article “deeply hurtful and entirely unacceptable.” He said stickers would be provided by the school to place over the article.
“Put a sticker over it. What do you mean, put a sticker over it?” asked Mitchell.
“Yeah. That’s unacceptable,” Golden chimed in. “What they should have done is collected all the yearbooks and redone them, and then passed them back out.”
PTA President Sloane Young said the school is offering refunds to anyone who purchased a yearbook. The PTA is also taking on the task of publishing a whole new set of yearbooks without the offensive article.
A racial equity meeting was also held for parents who wanted to discuss the incident further and share their concerns.