Three years ago, Lauren Bryant was walking across Appalachian State University’s campus with several other Black students when they were verbally assaulted with a racist tirade.
“This guy in a pickup truck stopped at the light, rolled down his window, and just started calling us a bunch of N-words,” she recalled.
It wasn’t the only time Bryant has had an experience like this at the overwhelmingly white campus in Boone, a town in one of North Carolina’s most conservative regions. Whether it’s the ubiquity of Confederate flags, Ku Klux Klan members handing out literature, or a parade of pickup trucks flying flags in support of President Donald Trump, she believes they’re all intended to signal that students of color are unwelcome there.
