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"I worked in Greenfield and I experienced these things. I worked where someone had hung a noose on a tree. These things still happen here and Hamilton valley is not that diverse," said Black.

Educational opportunity -- if you're white

"It's been almost two years and I'm still pushing this because I feel like I did this to my son. I put him in this school, and I knew there would be some microaggressions, and he might hear some vulgar talk, but I felt like, for both my kids, they would be able to get through it," said Black. "And the goal was them graduating from Hamilton County, they would be able to go to any college and they would have a much easier path than I did."

But Black didn't initially think her son was a victim of racism. She thought this was just standard schoolyard bullying as the new kid found his place among his classmates. And even now, she says the kids that bullied her son were not the problem -- the teachers and administrators who failed to protect him were.

Black, then Associate Consultant for Elanco, says she moved her family into the Hamilton Southeastern School District in Fishers, Indiana in 2017 because she wants to provide her children with educational opportunities that would allow them to pursue college educations at prestigious institutions.

HSE is a College Success Award Winner, which recognizes schools that "do an exemplary job getting students to enroll in and stick with college, including those that beat the odds by better serving low-income students." HSE has a rating of 9/10 and ranked No. 11 in Indiana.

Lawrence, the school where A now attends, ranked No. 208 in Indiana.  Black says the teachers there don't even talk about college because they don't expect their students to attend. Lawrence is a majority-black school.

From 2017 to 2019, A attended Fisher's elementary during his first and second grades. A was the only African American kid in his class.

Black says she and her son initially really liked his first-grade teacher, Angelicka Thompson. It wasn't until A came home with stories about playground incidents with other students that she started to become concerned.

The difference between "tattling" and telling when there's a problem

Black says she reached out to Thompson (through e-mails) for solutions. She wanted to approach the issues sensitively because she didn't want to say or do the wrong thing and negatively affect her son's education. She was given the brush-off. During a parent-teacher conference, she brought it up again.