School forced to apologise after white students pose for photo with black girl on leash

The scene was supposed to depict the use of tethers to keep children from running of hundreds of years ago

The school has apologised for the photo, shown above (Facebook)

An elementary school is facing a scandal after a picture posted online showed two white children posing with a black girl at the end of a leash.

Administrators at the Massachusetts school have been forced to explain that the picture was not a depiction of slavery, but was instead were supposed to replicate “lead strings”, which were used in the 17th century by parents to keep children from wandering off.

Not all parents are sold on that explanation, however.

“If you look at that picture out of context, what are you going to think? It’s clearly what it looks like, it’s disgusting,” one parent, who refused to identify herself, told CBSBoston.

The superintendent of the school district, Derek Swenson, said that the scene was not intended to offend anybody.

“It was never the intent of the lessons to demean or degrade any one person or group,” Mr Swenson said.

But other teachers noted that, even absent the skin colour, the photo was in poor taste.

“It seems like enslavement of a person. Even the colour of the child has nothing to do it,” Andrea St Clare, a parent, said.

Still, others said that the whole thing was being overblown.

“This is being blown out of proportion,” one parent yelled at the media Thursday, as they drove by the school.

The lesson was overseen by the director of education at Plymouth Plantation, a local historical site.

White people make up 81.8 per cent of the population in Massachusetts, while African Americans make up just 8.6 per cent of the population, according to US Census Bureau data.