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Tulsa students claim school picnic ruined by neighbors shouting racial slurs

Posted at 9:08 PM, May 25, 2017
and last updated 2017-05-26 00:47:56-04

TURLEY -- There are reports of racism on the outskirts of Tulsa after a charter school picnic ended with students in tears. 

Sitting on a red blanket, 11-year-olds Brandon and Eden are about to tell a story. It's a story they want you to listen to closely.

"It's not like we choose who we want to be and choose what color we want to be," said Eden Sisco, a Tulsa Legacy Charter fifth grade student.

Wednesday was the yearly picnic, an end-of-year celebration for all fifth graders.

"I'm on the barbecue grilling, now I don't like to mess up my meat because I want to eat that meat, but first and foremost it's about the kids," parent DeJuan Craven said. 

But things quickly turned ugly. Students and parents claim a family, who lives across from the school, started yelling racial slurs through a fence. 

"Anything that I would say that they said, you wouldn't be able to air it," Craven said.

Students said rocks were thrown at them. A handful  of rocks were found in the schoolyard on Thursday.

"I laid down on my blanket under this tree and I got hit on the ankle," Sisco said.

"Some people are just hurtful and all they see is hate," said Brandon Edwards,Tulsa Legacy Charter fifth grade student. "If they don't see somebody that looks like them, they think different."

Two confederate flags hang off the porch of the family's home. While 2 Works for You interviewed an upset parent, the family began to remove the flags.

"This is what they wanted, so we are going to give them what they want," parent Tracy Goodlow said. "They wanted this attention, so you're going to have to suffer the repercussions of what you've done."

"Will I be killed simply because I'm a threat to someone because of how I look?" parent Tanaya Edwards said.

But one day mending it is in question.

"We're really the same because we're all people and we should all be treated the same," Edwards said.

A report has been filed with the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office.

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