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The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the ACLU of Mississippi, have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing police and school officials in Mississippi’s Desoto County of physically assaulting, verbally abusing, and racially discriminating against black students on a school bus last August. Thirty students from DeSoto county Alternative Center School were on the bus when a disagreement between students began. The bus driver and monitor pulled the bus over and summoned the police. What followed was, according to the ACLU, a shocking example of unwarranted force and blatant discrimination in which a black female student was tackled and choked, 6 black students were arrested — three for smiling and one for saying she was calling her mother. The police also threatened to shoot all 30 students between the eyes. The entire incident was caught on videotape by a surveillance camera on the bus. It has been noted that a white student involved in the argument was not arrested or charged by police, and was not in any way disciplined by the school district. Subsequent to the incident, a recent report released by the ACLU entitled “Missing the Mark: Alternative Schools in the State of Mississippi,” concludes, in a nutshell, the nation’s alarming trend known as the “school to prison pipeline,” where students are removed from public schools and driven into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

GUEST: Nsombi Lambright, Executive Director ACLU of Mississippi, Jamie Dycus, lead attorney. For more information, visit www.aclu.org and www.msaclu.org.