Fuller picture from viral video of rally comes into focus

A fuller and more complicated picture emerged Sunday of the videotaped encounter between a Native American man and a throng of high school boys wearing “Make America Great Again” gear outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

Interviews and additional video footage suggest that a convergence of race, religion and ideological beliefs — against a national backdrop of political tension — set the stage for the viral moment. Early video excerpts from the encounter obscured the larger context.

Leading up to the encounter Friday, a rally for Native Americans and other indigenous people was wrapping up. Dozens of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, who had been in Washington for the March for Life rally, were standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, many of them white and wearing apparel bearing the President Donald Trump’s slogan. There were also black men who identified themselves as Hebrew Israelites, preaching their beliefs and shouting racially combative comments at the Native Americans and the students, according to witnesses and video on social media.

Soon, the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, 64, was encircled by an animated group of high school boys. He beat a ceremonial drum as a boy wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat stood inches away. The boy identified himself in a statement released Sunday night as Nick Sandmann, a junior.

It was a provocative image that rocketed across social media, leading many, including the students’ own school, to condemn the boys’ behavior as disrespectful. But Sunday, Phillips clarified that it was he who had approached the crowd and that he had intervened because racial tensions — primarily between the white students and the black men — were “coming to a boiling point.”

“I stepped in between to pray,” Phillips said.

In his statement, Sandmann said he did not antagonize or try to block Phillips. “I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves,” he said.

The encounter became the latest touch point for racial and political tensions in America, with diverging views about what really happened.

Conservatives and other supporters maintained that the students had been unfairly vilified out of context, while those affiliated with the Indigenous Peoples March said they perceived the combination of the group’s size, behavior and political apparel as threatening.

By Sunday, thousands of people had signed an online petition started by a graduate of the school to remove its principal, while in some circles Phillips was cast as a professional activist engaged in a publicity stunt.