The leaders of a school in Louisiana are under fire for reprimanding nearly a dozen teachers because they wore T-shirts with the words “Chucks & Pearls” in honor of Vice President Kamala Harris, who was inaugurated as the first woman vice president in the country's history on Wednesday.

Joy Trahan, a teacher at Breaux Bridge High School, and other teachers in the St. Martin Parish Schools district joined hundreds of other women across the country who celebrated the historic inauguration with the pearls and sneakers, local news outlet KLFY reported.

The pearls were a reference to Harris' membership in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, as Blavity previously reported. Alpha Kappa Alpha is the oldest Black Greek-lettered sorority in the country and many of its 290,000 members across the world took the occasion to wear their pearls.

Some also wore Converse's Chuck Taylors, a stylistic flair Harris used on the campaign trail. Hundreds of women shared photos of themselves on social media with pearls and Chucks on Wednesday.

By midday on Wednesday, administrators in St. Martin School District told Trahan and other teachers to either take the shirts off, cover them or go home because it was a "political" statement.

“It says ‘Chucks & Pearls’ only. No 2021. No nothing. Not even in the colors of a party,” Trahan told KLFY.

“It wasn’t political. It was an empowerment of women. This was a historical moment if anything, not political, and we teach history. That’s social studies, so I don’t see how they want to twist and turn that to political,” Trahan added.

Trahan reiterated that the shirts had nothing to do with politics and were simply an expression of happiness about the fact that a woman had made it to higher office for the first time in the country's long history.

“It didn’t matter who the woman would have been. Every woman should have been happy about it, and whether it was 'Chucks & Pearls' or a different slogan for a different woman, I don’t see what the issue is. It was brought up as political by them not us, so it’s like it’s what they want to view it as basically. It’s their mind view, their perspective that just took it the whole wrong way,” she said.

She noted that teachers at other schools, who wore similar outfits did not have any problems. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards attended the inauguration in person with his son, according to WDSU.

When KLFY contacted the St. Martin Parish Schools’ superintendent, he refused to do an in-person interview and sent a statement instead.

“The Board maintains a policy that prohibits employees from wearing clothing, pins or other items supporting candidates or political messages,” Al Blanchard, the superintendent of St. Martin Schools, said.

“Neither myself nor the board intends to suppress nor promote any candidate or political philosophy,” Blanchard added.

St. Martin's Parish has a population of more than 50,000, with 30 percent being Black. The town is about 60 percent white and has been in the news as of late for its very high rate of COVID-19 infections. About 18 percent of all those tested have been positive for COVID-19 and 13 people have died from the virus over the last two weeks, according to The New York Times.

The newspaper reported that the high positivity rate signals that the number of cases in the parish has been "significantly" undercounted.

Chucks-&-Pearls

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