(Updated at 12:10 p.m. on 12/23/21) The woman accused of disrupting a children’s dance performance last spring is facing new charges.
Jackie Carter was in court on Friday for an arraignment on an assault charge. Prosecutors say they dropped the original disorderly conduct charge against her after determining that assault, also a Class 1 misdemeanor, was the “more appropriate charge.”
As we reported in January, Carter was charged with disorderly conduct following an incident on April 30, 2011, in which she booed a Bowen McCauley Dance Company performance at Kenmore Middle School.
The performance, which featured live music by a Kenmore Middle School band, included a dance number that Carter said she found to be “racist and offensive to African-Americans and African American women especially.”
“The skit involved a white child and her black mamee singing and dancing together to the song ‘Lil Rabbit where’s Ya Mamee,'” Carter wrote in a lengthy blog post. “The Mamee scene was a celebration of the many black women, enslaved and used as wet-nurses and the many other unspeakable crimes committed against their enslaved minds, souls and bodies.”
Carter said that during her protest she got into a physical confrontation with Arlington County Board member Mary Hynes and four other Bowen-McCauley staff members. The charge against her, however, accuses Carter of assaulting Jaime Areizaga-Soto, who was running for state Senate at the time of the incident.
Prosecutors were not able to release any additional details about the alleged assault. Carter’s trial date is set for June 29.