Last year, the school expelled a student because of a racially charged incident, and this year the deans have suspended a couple of students for such problems, Finger said. “Mostly, our kids are tolerant of their ethnic diversities in their school.”

‘A safe placeto come and talk’

Very few racially charged incidents are reported in schools throughout the county each year, according to Nikirk, Finger and other principals. But what about more subtle forms of prejudice and discrimination in the hallways and classrooms?

“I still think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” says 17-year-old Maggie Cunningham, one of the founders of Elwood High School’s student group People’s Action for Rights (PAR).

Cunningham and some others in the school started PAR to work for all human rights, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexuality or other differences.

“We target all human rights,” Cunningham said. “We started this year as a safe place for someone to come and talk.”

Cunningham and her friends are aware of a white supremacist presence in Elwood and her high school, but she said “The KKK is dying. They try to get anybody they see as an Anglo-Saxon white male. They go after socially awkward kids, loners.”

Makala Wagner, who is in third grade at Edgewood Elementary in the Elwood school system, has never had a problem in the school because of her race, according to her adopted mother, Liz Wagner.

“She felt more accepted here (than at her previous school in Clinton County),” said Wagner, an English teacher at Elwood High School. “She experienced a lot of bullying, comments there.

“I remember her first day of school in Clinton County. She didn’t know about racism. A little girl came up to her and said, ‘My family doesn’t like black people.’ I was just devastated. But Edgewood is such a positive experience. She loves it.”

Wagner grew up in Anderson and had some “preconceived notions” about Elwood when she brought her Ethiopian child to the city.

Elwood once had a reputation for being a bastion of intolerance. KKK rallies in the city in the 1920s attracted thousands. In the 1970s, there was a cross burning in Elwood, and the Klan demonstrated there. The city officially denounced the Klan in 1995 when the KKK planned a rally in Elwood, but 10 Klan members marched in the city in 2001.

‘The right to believe, the right to belong’