Mike Hixenbaugh had been a journalist for years, reporting on a variety of topics ranging from education policy to healthcare, the military and other subjects, when one day he discovered a potential story literally in his front yard. It was the summer of 2020, and in response to a local Facebook thread spreading false information about antifa operating in his neighborhood, Hixenbaugh and his wife, who is Black, put up a Black Lives Matter lawn sign in their front yard. The response was prompt: “Every weekend for two months after my wife put the sign up, someone drove their four-wheeler into our yard and did donuts in it, churning up deep divots in the grass.”
At that point, Hixenbaugh realized that something had been happening in his quiet suburb, something that was probably very big – unraveling just what was afoot would be the journalistic work of years, and would ultimately result in his new book, They Came for the Schools.
