As Schools Face Charges of Intolerance, A Look Back At Racism in Visalia

Late in 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint against the Visalia Unified School District for violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. According to the ACLU, African American students said their white peers referred to them as slaves and joked about hanging them from trees. Two reporters from the Visalia Times Delta decided to look back at the city’s racially charged past starting with a Ku Klux Klan convention in 1931. We spoke with reporters James Ward and Calley Cederlof.