MILWAUKEE, Wis. – A Milwaukee teacher is under investigation after a parent complained about an assignment that tasked students with defending the Ku Klux Klan in a seventh-grade research paper.

“When we return in January, students will watch the movie To Kill a Mockingbird and do a research paper o the history of the Ku Klux Klan,” the teacher at Business and Economic Academy of Milwaukee wrote in a letter to parents cited by TMJ4. “This paper will be a persuasive paper defending Klan members on trial.

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“The research is being done leading into Black History Month 2017. The goal of this paper is not to teach the student the Klan was correct in their behavior, but rather to teach the students to write persuasively.”

Parent Damaris Dorsey told WTHR that when she realized what her black son was asked to write a paper defending the KKK, “my eyes got big and I immediately just got angry.”

She said seventh-graders are too young to understand the purpose of the assignment.

“How do you have a seventh grade student take a side on someone that has hated our culture, and our background and our ethnicity for so many years?” she questioned.

“To even ask my child to write a paper like this – his mind, level of thinking, is not there yet,” Dorsey told Fox 6. “I don’t teach him hate. So therefore, he does not know the in-depth of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Others, like “community activist” Tory Lowe, agree with Dorsey.

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“These are young students, young children,” Lowe said. “This is not a law class. If it was a Jewish child, they wouldn’t give him an assignment to defend Hitler.”

School officials announced Monday that they suspended both the assignment and the teacher, who is black, while they conduct an investigation. Lowe said parents are planning a protest at the school tomorrow, nonetheless.

“(Business and Economic Academy of Milwaukee) feels that the objective of teaching students how to write persuasively is important,” school officials wrote in a prepared statement. “However, we feel that the choice of topic is inappropriate for a seventh grade class.

“A new topic will be selected for the assignment.”