It’s worth watching the whole video.
The teens did nothing wrong. Stood their ground.
The furor over the behavior of a group of Catholic school students from Kentucky toward a Native American elder during weekend protests in Washington, D.C., took a turn Sunday with the emergence of a new video.
The one-hour, 46-minute video presents a fuller picture of the events Friday that culminated with students from the all-male Covington Catholic High School coming face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, a longtime Native American activist and Vietnam veteran, as he chanted and banged a drum in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
A viral 3-minute, 44-second clip that shows the teenagers – several of them wearing “Make America Great Again” hats – laughing, hooting and hollering while surrounding Phillips drew widespread condemnation and prompted the school and the Diocese of Covington to issue an apology and promise to take “appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.’’
The longer version of the incident is more complex, and now that it has surfaced, the rush to judge the teenagers, who were in the nation’s capital for the anti-abortion March for Life, is coming under attack.
Fuller video casts new light on Covington Catholic students’ encounter with Native American elder
CLOSE Corrections & Clarifications: This story has been updated to clarify the original description of Nathan Phillips’ military service. Phillips is a Vietnam-era veteran who served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from May 1972 to May 1976 and did not deploy to a war zone, according to the Defense Department.