By early February, Jessica Henninger realized something had drastically changed at her daughters' school at the Fort Campbell military base in Kentucky.
First, she said she received an email from one of her daughter's teachers asking for students to return their library books and saying the library would be closed indefinitely.
Around the same time, a Black History Month project – a living wax museum in which her other daughter was planning to depict the poet Maya Angelou – was also canceled.
The changes came days after the Pentagon issued guidance not to use official resources to mark cultural awareness months, such as Black History Month. According to the guidance, labeled "Identity Months Dead at DoD," "efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution."
The school her daughters attend is operated by the federal government as part of the Department of Defense Education Activity, often referred to as DoDEA. There are more than 67,000 students across DoDEA locations in the United States and 11 other countries, according to its website.
