For Homecoming spirit week, STUCO planned Monday, Sept. 26 to be America Day, but when students walked through the halls, they saw many people wearing all black instead.

A select few students, including seniors Elizabeth Collinger and Naomi Edwards, decided to bring the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ladue hallways by asking students to wear all black. A source of inspiration for this protest was that various Black Student Unions around the country have been wearing all black in solidarity of Black Lives Matter, according to Collinger.

“We have to bring social awareness to our own environment first,” Edwards said. “Once we bring awareness to Ladue, we can step out of Ladue and bring awareness to St. Louis County. to Missouri and to other states.”

Students used Facebook and word of mouth to spread the message to tell people to wear all black. The leaders of the movement chose America Day to call attention to the problems that black people face daily, according to Collinger.

“It was America Day [because] we wanted to bring up the big issues like [black people] being pulled over by the police more often than white people,” Collinger said. “It wasn’t about dividing people, it was simply about bringing attention because during spirit week a lot of people are going to be dressing up and something like that made a really powerful statement.”

Students in the school crossed out ‘America Day’ on posters around the school listing the spirit days and wrote over it ‘Black Out.’ Seeing this and everyone wearing black, according to Collinger, brought up conversations about Black Lives Matter.

“I think a lot of people started calling into question, ‘what is Black Lives Matter,’” Collinger said. “It started [inspiring] conversations, which is really important. There still is ignorance, and to combat that, we need to have more discussions about race.”

The students not only wore all black, but they also had a ten minutes of silence in memory of those who had lost their lives from police brutality. This protest filled the commons at 2 p.m. on Monday. The students held up posters of the black people who had died because of police violence.

“We decided that putting out the names of everyone that lost their lives in 2016 would be very powerful so that everyone could see on a firsthand account this person lost their life, this person lost their life, and we have to deal with it,” Edwards said.

A common question about the Black Lives Matter movement is that shouldn’t it be “All Lives Matter.” However, according to Edwards, Black Lives does not mean at all lives don’t matter, it just means that black people have faced inequality in this country, which requires them to stand up for themselves.

“I think it is something that we should all pay attention to because if it was your brother, or your father or your uncle then you would be affected by it,” Edwards said “We have to do what we have to do to get the world to recognize that we are just as equal, that we are just as powerful, as intelligent to do different things.”