At one point, the Hebrew Israelites began arguing with Native American activists, telling them the word “Indian” means “savage,” according to the video.
While the groups argued, some students laughed and mocked them, according to Banyamyan and another Hebrew Israelite, Ephraim Israel, who came from New York for the event. As tension grew, the Hebrew Israelites started insulting the students.
“Tell them to come over in the lion’s den instead of mocking from over there,” Banyamyan can be heard saying in the video. “Y’all dirty ass little crackers, your day is coming.”
“They were sitting there, mocking me as I was trying to teach my brothers, so yes the attention turned to them,” Israel told The Washington Post. “I explained to them, you want to build the wall for Mexicans and other indigenous people, but you’ve never seen a black or a Mexican shoot up a school.”
hillips said he and his fellow Native American activists also had issues with the students throughout the day.
“Before they got centered on the black Israelites, they would walk through and say things to each other, like, ‘Oh, the Indians in my state are drunks or thieves,’” the 64-year-old said.
Phillips said he heard students shout, “Go back to Africa!”
Sandmann said in his statement that he “did not witness or hear any students chant ‘build that wall’ or anything hateful or racist at any time. Assertions to the contrary are simply false.”
He said he and his classmates were shouting cheers they knew from school, with permission from their chaperones, “to drown out the hateful comments that were being shouted at us by the protesters.”
By 5 p.m., the light was fading on the Mall and both marches had mostly petered out. A group of around 100 Covington students had gathered on the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, where they had been told to meet before catching their buses home.
The Hebrew Israelites were also still there, and still insulting the students.
“You all are a bunch of Donald Trump incest babies,” Israel said to them, according to the video, before asking if there were any black students among them.
When a black Covington student came forward, Israel called him “Kanye West” and the n-word, the footage shows. He tells the teen his friends will one day harvest his organs, an apparent reference to the racially fraught movie “Get Out.”
At that point, the students began chanting, jumping and shouting. The songs culminated in one student stripping off his shirt and shouting as others cheered.
“The chants are commonly used at sporting events. They are all positive in nature,” Sandmann said. “We would not have done that without obtaining permission from the adults in charge of our group.”
Banyamyan said the Hebrew Israelites took the performance as a racist impersonation.
“They were mocking my ancestors in a chant, one of them was jumping up and down like a cave man,” he said. “Did I provoke that?”
'A mob mentality'
To Jessica Travis, a Florida attorney who was at the memorial with her mother, the students looked out of control.
“The kids really went into a mob mentality, honestly,” she said, adding that she didn’t see any chaperones trying to control the situation. She said she heard one student tell the Hebrew Israelites to “drink the Trump water.”
Jon Stegenga, a photojournalist who drove to Washington on Friday from South Carolina to cover the Indigenous Peoples March, recalled hearing students say “build the wall” and “Trump 2020.” He said it was about that time that Phillips intervened.
