We have written a letter to the Millburn Township Committee requesting that we raise the Black Lives Matter flag. The letter is included below and all main points apply to the Board of Education as well. All support is needed and greatly appreciated.

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Dear Mayor Lieberberg and members of the Millburn Township Committee,

My name is Henry Knoll-Finn and I am a Millburn High School graduate (Class of 2019), attend New York University, and have lived in Millburn/Short Hills since the start of ninth grade as an active member of the Millburn/MHS community.

I along with members of the community are writing to you to request that our township fly the Black Lives Matter flag in front of Town Hall to demonstrate our community’s solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and show our commitment to ameliorating racial injustice within our township. It is vitally important, now more than ever, that we as an inclusive, welcoming community display our continuous and perpetual solidarity with the Black community and come together to unequivocally say Black Lives Matter. The flag cannot be flown only in a time of increased activism and awareness, but should be flown year-round alongside the Stars and Stripes, reminding us of our commitment to the stand against racial injustice in our town and country. 

Millburn/Short Hills serves as a prime example of how systemic racism has pervaded our society and affected Black citizens. Suburbia largely exists as the product of redlining and economic and racial injustice that permeated this country after reconstruction and during the Great Migration. We, in our insular, wealthy, and de facto segregated community have existed without meaningful racial reform, education, and outreach simply because it was easier than to do the work to right the injustices that have been ingrained in American society since our very founding. Though it might not be any direct fault of yours or ours, only 2.3% of Millburn’s population is Black. And in Short Hills, sixth on Bloomberg’s list of wealthiest towns in America, that number is an abysmal 0.3%. 0.3%. Aside from being heinously underrepresented in our community, Black students face palpable prejudice and injustice within our schools that often include rampant uses of the N-word, deliberate prejudiced statements made by students and faculty, microaggressions, and racial profiling, in addition to having almost no black teachers within the school. Not only that, but the Millburn High School administration often ignores racial issues present in its schools. I should hope you and the committee are well aware of these problems, and if not, we would welcome the opportunity to open a candid and productive discord about racial problems within our town and how we might go about addressing them. Flying the BLM flag is only a first step in this process. We had a march, which was absolutely spectacular and indispensable in this fight, but now we all must keep moving forward and realize that education and advocacy never truly ends. 

I will not pretend to know how much you deal with on a daily basis in the running and inner workings of Millburn/Short Hills, and I sincerely hope this is not falling on ears that think this is just ‘yet another issue’ that we have to address. There are actionable deliverables that our town can take at the present moment to further and implement the message that the raising of the Black Lives Matter flag sends. We hope you are open to this proposal and would welcome an ongoing discussion about how to best help the Black members of our community and help make Millburn/Short Hills more inclusive, accepting, and understanding to people of all races and backgrounds. 

We thank you for taking the time to read and consider this proposal, and we look forward to working with you more on this vital project. 

Sincerely,

Henry Knoll-Finn (MHS ‘19)

Jade Wicker (MHS ‘20)