When Ellen Reddy learned of a predominantly white school district in south-west Missouri that reinstated corporal punishment as a last resort for disciplining students, Reddy, who raised two Black boys and is a grandmother, became upset. Even in the modern-day US, Black children like her grandchildren are still twice as likely to be beaten in schools as white children.
The return of corporal punishment in Cassville, Missouri, where school board officials once abandoned the practice in 2001, departs from a national decline in the use of corporal punishment in schools.
