The PTA at Oakland's Montclair Elementary School is frantically trying to undo the damage, as their new and just-released yearbook contains a pretty outrageous racial slur from a reprinted 1940s-era newspaper clipping.

Montclair Elementary School in Oakland’s Montclair District would seem a pretty racially progressive school. A mural on the front of the school depicts a choir of children singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," aka the Black National Anthem. That mural also depicts the late Wanda Redman, a Black woman known as “Miss Wanda” who served as the school’s music teacher for more than 20 years.

But there’s clearly some racial anxiety around the Montclair Elementary School community at the moment. KTVU reports that the school’s yearbook was printed and distributed with a racial slur in it, and no one noticed this until all of the yearbooks had already been handed out to students.

How did this happen? The yearbook contains a reprinted clipping from a 1940’s newspaper article from The Montclairian, a weekly neighborhood newspaper that still exists. And that article contained a reference to a carnival game that was colloquially called “n***** babies.”

"The description of the game, once you start Googling it, is horrific," Montclair PTA president Sloane Young told KTVU. We did Google it, and the description is as awful as you would imagine.

But apparently, parents and staff volunteering on the yearbook project simply did not notice the slur. "Unfortunately, they skimmed the first paragraph of that article, and scanned it into the software we use for the yearbook," Young added. "I have a very bold, outspoken eight-year-old, and when she saw it, she said, ‘Mom, why did you allow this to go in the yearbook when you’re Black?’"

The Montclair PTA ordered all new copies of the yearbook. Some fifth graders were allowed to keep their yearbooks because they’d already had their friends sign them, and those students will be given stickers with which to cover up the offensive reference.

Related: Entire Tamalpais High School Football Program Put On Probation Over Racist Incidents [SFist]

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