High School Secretary is Out of a Job after Calling MLK Day “N-Word Day”

“How you get fired on your day off?”

 By Kalyn Womack

I thought most snarky comments about Black holidays were about Juneteenth but apparently Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a topic of conversation too. A secretary at a Louisiana high school made a wack joke referring to the holiday as N****r Day in a text that got exposed and ended up costing her job, according to a Daily Mail report.

Ouachita Parish Junior High School secretary Nelwyn Fontana (or should I say former secretary) allegedly sent a series of text messages to someone she referred to as “coach” discussing the day off.

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“N—- day lol mark Luther King… Remind your [players] Sunday [we’re] off Monday for Mark Luther King day Monday,” read the message.

I did y’all a favor fixing a few of the hundred typos. Also… who’s Mark?! If she’s spitting racial slurs, the disrespectful misnaming of Dr. King could have been intentional or maybe she really just can’t spell. A few messages later she retracted her remarks realizing how ridiculous she sounded.

“I’m very sorry coach I didn’t mean to send that first text to u please forgive me.”

Her apology was certainly too late as the screenshot of her message was blasted all over Facebook. As a result, Fontana faced a gruesome amount of backlash from both parents and community members.

In a Facebook post on Monday, Walter Geno McLaughlin, who describes himself as an artist, activist, and organizer, shared a video revealing an image of former Ouachita Parish Junior High School secretary Nelwyn Fontana alongside a screenshot of her alleged texts.

‘Nelwyn Fontana is office secretary at Ouachita Jr High in Monroe, LA and took time on this #MLKDay to let us know how she really feels about honoring Dr. King,’ McLaughlin wrote in the post shared to Facebook.

‘What she didn’t realize is that she accidentally sent her hate filled message to the wrong person.’

McLaughlin continued: ‘These are the type of people we entrust to educate our children. …From what I understand the school district allowed her to resign but there are many who feel like she should’ve been terminated.’

According to the Monroe News-Star, the Ouachita Parish Superintendent Don Coker confirmed Ms. Fontana is no longer employed by the school board. The high school principal said they do not “condone any form of racism in their schools and community.”

Umm… are you sure? From the looks of the comments reacting to the Facebook post, some parents say this behavior isn’t new.

“Anybody actually from Ouachita. and grew up in that system. we’re not shocked… lol. we grew up in that shit,” someone commented under the post.

“It’s been one thing after the other with this school,” the parent said.

It’s only a matter of time until we find out what other racist nonsense is going on down in Ouachita.