2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation
On January 18, 2019, a confrontation between groups of political demonstrators took place near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The interaction between white Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann and Native American Nathan Phillips was captured in photos and videos disseminated by major media outlets. Other recordings of the incident showed that initial media reports had omitted details. Reports of the incident triggered outrage in the United States, including calls to dox the students. The students received death threats and Covington Catholic High School temporarily closed due to fears for its students' safety.
The short videos of the encounter that were uploaded to social media platforms received millions of views and were widely shared. At first, the anger focused on the students and the school, which, along with some of the students, received threats of violence. The incident was described by The New York Times as an "explosive convergence of race, religion and ideological beliefs" and a Vox editorial called it the "nation's biggest story".
In February 2019, the Covington Diocese released a report made by a private detective agency hired by the diocese and the high school, stating that the report exonerated the students. Covington students have filed a number of multi-million dollar defamation lawsuits against news agencies. Nicholas Sandmann, the Covington student featured in most media coverage of the incident, settled lawsuits with CNN, The Washington Post, and NBCUniversal. He later lost his suits against The New York Times, CBS, ABC, Rolling Stone, and Gannett.
Incident
On the afternoon of January 18, 2019, on the Plaza of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., two separate marches were held: the Indigenous Peoples March, which had the purpose of raising awareness of indigenous people's issues, and the March for Life, which had the purpose of raising awareness of anti-abortion issues. For about ten minutes, there was an overlap on the Plaza of a small group from the Indigenous Peoples March and a larger group of students aged 15 and 16 from the all-male Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, who were gathering at their appointed meeting place at the steps of the Plaza to wait for their buses to return home. Before the students arrived, a group of five Black Hebrew Israelites stood in a row "shouting scripture from red books" and taunting passersby. As the students began to arrive, the Black Hebrew Israelites began to taunt them. As more Covington students arrived, and in response to these taunts, the students performed school spirit sports chants, including their version of a Māori haka. One of the Native Americans who was there for the march said that he felt "the students were mocking the dance".According to a January 23 New York Times article, Indigenous Peoples March participants said they had interpreted the "loud chanting" and the size of the group, as well as their MAGA apparel, as "aggressive and disruptive to their demonstration" which had just concluded. Nathan Phillips, a member of the Omaha tribe who had participated in the March, listened to the chants for what he said was about ten minutes. He said he thought that there was a confrontation between the students and the street preachers that he believed had reached a "boiling point". In his early press interviews, Phillips accused the Covington students of hate and racism. He later said that he had intended to defuse what he perceived as escalating tension between the students and the preachers. According to the Detroit Free Press, Phillips said, "They were in the process of attacking these four black individuals.... These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that." According to CNN's Sara Sidner, two minutes after one of the students took off his shirt to lead the haka, the "drum beat of Phillips and another Native American drummer in the video". They sang the AIM Song, a Native American intertribal song.
Phillips and a second Native American, both with ceremonial drums, walked towards the students grouped along the stairs. Sidner said that while some of the students danced to Phillips' drum beat and chanted along with him for a while, they were not "enjoying each other's company". Soon, Phillips was "encircled" by about 30 students, "many of them white and wearing apparel bearing the slogan of President Trump", red baseball hats with the phrase "Make America Great Again". Phillips continued to beat his ceremonial drum and sing for nearly two minutes as a boy wearing the red MAGA hat chose not to retreat with what some interpreted as a smirk on his face. The student later explained that he smiled because he wanted Phillips to know "that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation."
Black Hebrew Israelites
Earlier footage that was released did not include the presence of a group of five Black Hebrew Israelites on the Plaza near the Reflecting Pond, part of a One West Camp offshoot believing in the "12 tribes" doctrine. They stood in a row "shouting scripture from red books" and taunting passers-by. According to CNN's Sara Sidner they were "taunting... people of all colors, other black visitors, natives, and a Catholic priest" shortly after the end of the Indigenous Peoples March, and before the students arrived on the scene. As the students began to arrive to wait for their bus, the Black Hebrew Israelites began to shout insults directly at them.According to witnesses and video subsequently appearing on social media, the Black Hebrew Israelite men shouted racist slurs at the high school students as well as Native Americans. They called the students "a bunch of incest babies", future "school shooters", and "dirty ass little crackers", and said "you give faggots rights". Many students reacted by saying things such as "whoa" and "easy". The Hebrew Israelites also called a passing black man who tried to disagree with them a "coon", told indigenous activists that the word Indian means "savage", and said to a woman who had stopped to argue with them: "Where's your husband? Bring your husband. Let me speak to him."
Response
News media started covering the story on the evening of January 18, 2019, in response to the viral spread of initial videos posted to social media. Within days of their first coverage of the incident, many news media outlets had revisited their reports and revised the narrative, as more information became available. This included longer videos which contextualized the incident, in-depth analyses and statements from spokesmen for the participants directly involved. The media were sharply criticized for basing their initial reporting on social media, particularly the user-generated short videos, that did not include the minutes before and after the incident. These new sources, which included interviews with participants, revealed the chronology of events, showing how the students had become agitated by the taunts of the Hebrew Israelites before Phillips came on the scene.Participants at the Indigenous Peoples March posted the first videos of the incident in the evening of Friday, January 18, 2019, following the events. These first videos were roughly only a minute long, when Phillips was drumming, closely encircled by a large group of interested students. They did not include the minutes before and after that contextualized the incident. As described by Vox, the short videos gave the impression "that the boys were harassing the Native American elder". One of these was a one-minute clip posted by Guam resident Kaya Taitano, a student at the University of the District of Columbia, who was with the small group of other participants at the Memorial late afternoon when the incident took place. She filmed the moment that CNN later described as "a smiling young man in a red Make America Great Again hat standing directly in front of the man, who was playing a drum and chanting. Other kids could be seen laughing, jumping around and seemingly making fun of the chants." Taitano uploaded it to Instagram at 7:33 pm, and her video was later reposted that day to Twitter via user "2020fight" under the title "This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March"; it received over 2.5 million views by January 21. The second video, posted to YouTube by KC Noland, reached two million viewers in two hours Saturday morning, January 19, and over four and a half million by January 24.
The first social media video clips were short and focused on this moment, leading to initial harsh criticism of the high school students, who some described as mocking and harassing the elder. Some people affiliated with the March described the boys as appearing threatening due to their numbers, actions, and the "Make America Great Again" caps and clothing that some wore. By January 20, longer videos had been uploaded. Phillips clarified that it was he who had approached the crowd of students, in what he said was an attempt to defuse what Phillips perceived to be a brewing conflict between the students and a third group of five men who were identified as Black Hebrew Israelites who had been taunting the white students with homophobic slurs.
Strong reactions to the event prompted an immediate backlash against the school, the students, and their chaperones. The Washington Post described the incident as a "tense encounter" that "prompted outrage". One of the featured speakers at the Indigenous Peoples March, Ruth Buffalo, a North Dakota Representative and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, said the students' disrespect of what was meant to have been a "celebration of all cultures" saddened her. She added, "The behaviour shown in that video is just a snapshot of what Indigenous people have faced and are continuing to face." Buffalo suggested "some kind of meeting with the students to provide education on issues facing Native Americans." House Representative Deb Haaland wrote, "The students' display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration. Heartbreaking." Actress Alyssa Milano wrote: "This is Trump's America. And it brought me to tears. What are we teaching our young people? Why is this ok? How is this ok? Please help me understand. Because right now I feel like my heart is living outside of my body".
Over the next several days statements from a spokesperson for the March, an attorney for the Lakota People's Law Project, from Nicholas Sandmann, and other officials, offered different perspectives on the incident. In the wake of the widespread sharing of more detailed video clips, media analyses of the videos, and statements, public opinion became polarized, with some saying the students were completely absolved of all wrongdoing and others saying the students were disrespectful of a Native American elder on a day that should have been a celebration of the first Indigenous Peoples March.