COVINGTON, Ky. – Just hours after President Donald Trump intensified the nation’s focus on this Northern Kentucky town, describing the students of Covington Catholic High School as “symbols of Fake News” in a Tuesday morning tweet, Native Americans assembled in front of the local diocese in protest.
They demanded an apology for the confrontation between local students and a Native American elder in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Friday, an incident that has pushed this area into the center of the heated national debates over politics, race and the media.
There have been death threats, local officials say, and fears that large demonstrations could descend on Covington Catholic High School, upending life around this town of 40,000 just south of Cincinnati.
In light of security concerns, Covington Catholic shut down Tuesday, what should have been the first day of classes since a video of students in a faceoff with Native American protesters and Black Israelites at the Lincoln Memorial went viral over the weekend. Police cars with flashing lights blocked the entrance to its sprawling campus as news crews gathered in an adjoining parking lot.
The incident “has already permanently altered the lives of many people,” the diocese said in a statement Tuesday, noting that an independent, third-party investigation into the Lincoln Memorial incident will begin this week.
The students were in Washington to participate in the antiabortion March for Life and were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats when the incident occurred.
All activities were canceled at Covington Catholic – an all-boys school of about 600 students, according to its website – and students and staff were ordered to stay away by the administration and diocese, according to a school parent.
Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders said he could not comment on the nature of the threats and did not answer questions about who investigators believe were behind them or who was targeted.
The protesters who gathered on a street corner close to the Diocese of Covington said they hoped to turn Friday’s standoff into a teaching moment, bringing a message of reconciliation.
About 40 people, some from as far away as Chicago, shuffled and shared hand warmers as they listened to Native American prayers.
“Anybody threatening violence should be totally ashamed of themselves,” said Lance Soto, co-chairman of the American Indian Movement Chapter of Indiana and Kentucky, who helped organize the gathering.
Few people in the Covington Catholic community would comment on the record about the incident in the nation’s capital. Websites for Covington Catholic High School and the Catholic Diocese of Covington have been taken down.
“They have been so slammed with messages and threats, very serious threats of violence, that I don’t know when they plan to reopen,” said Mike Schafer, director of communications for the neighboring Cincinnati Archdiocese, which serves parishes in Ohio.
The Covington diocese includes 47 parishes spread out from the edge of Appalachia near Maysville, Kentucky, some 80 miles away, to parishes within sight of Cincinnati’s skyscrapers. Parishes from throughout the region feed students into Covington Catholic, which opened in 1925.
Regardless of whether the school was open Tuesday, Marty Boyer had already made his decision ahead of time: He was going to keep his son, a junior, home for the day.
“When I think about security in the context of this, I evaluate how quickly this story was taken out of proportion; it is not a big deal to keep him home for a day,” he said. “Keeping him safe at home for a day is not going to wreck his education.”
As a whole, Boyer is supportive of the school and its environment.
“Covington Catholic cares about the young men that are in the building,” Boyer says.
His son was not on the Washington trip, and he wonders whether the students who did may have been ill-prepared to handle an encounter with opposing protesters and activists.
“The young men had on a flag that they were not prepared to defend,” he said of the MAGA hat that many of the students were wearing. “Right or wrong, they had a flag on and that flag is a lightning rod, and those young boys were not prepared for it.”
Daniel Paul Nelson, of the Lakota People’s Law Project, disputed student Nicholas Sandmann’s version of events. Sandmann said he was trying to keep the situation from escalating when he stood face to face with Nathan Phillips, who was beating a drum as a participant in the Indigenous Peoples March.
“His whole frame is that they were somehow attacked and behaving defensively,” Nelson said. “No, they were not, not towards Nathan. What they did to Nathan was completely offensive, not defensive.”
Phillips has offered to meet with the students and have a “dialogue about cultural appropriation, racism, and the importance of listening to and respecting diverse cultures,” according to the release from the Indigenous Peoples Movement. Nelson said organizers plan to reach out to Sandmann and to the school.
“The objective here is not to make the children (look) bad,” Nelson said.
The students’ behavior also upset Carolina Castoreno-Santana, executive director of the American Indian Center of Indiana, who was one of the speakers at Tuesday’s protest. She also slammed the schools’ chaperones for not reining in the children, who are shown chanting, dancing and doing a tomahawk chop in videos of the incident.
“Saying those are just high schoolers is just like saying ‘boys will be boys,’ and that is no longer acceptable,” she said.
Santana saw the pro-Trump MAGA hat that the student was wearing as provocative.
“Wearing that hat is a symbol of hatred on Native lands,” Santana said.
One man, Don Wegman, came to the protest wearing a red MAGA hat. He said he had supported Trump’s campaign and came to this demonstration with a message of reconciliation.
“My hat,” he said, “represents coming together, not tearing people down.”
He took his hat off as he listened to an Indian prayer. He heard Guy Jones of the Hunkpapa Lakota speak, and then he dodged across the crowd.
The two men looked at each other and embraced before exchanging numbers and an offer to meet for coffee or a meal.
Wegman turned to leave.
Jones smiled.
“That’s what I was hoping for,” he said.
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The Washington Post’s Kristine Phillips contributed to this report.
