Jaycob Linsey, Who Went Viral In 2018 After His Class Found Out They Were Seeing ‘Black Panther,’ Has Graduated From High School
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You may remember one of the most viral videos of 2018, in which school children broke out into dance and cheers after learning they would be seeing Marvel’s Black Panther. The clip racked up millions of views at the time and resurfaced after Chadwick Boseman’s passing in 2020.
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Jaycob Linsey, one of the school children in the video, has since graduated from high school.
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At the time of the viral video, he was a student at Ron Clark Academy, a nonprofit middle school in Atlanta, Georgia. The school had received a $5 million donation from Oprah Winfrey in 2017.
“There was all this excitement around seeing someone who looks like you onscreen,” Kirk Brown, the school’s chief development and communications officer, told The Hollywood Reporter about the day the video was filmed. “We brought the kids together for a school meeting and [school founder] Mr. [Ron] Clark just made the announcement and said, ‘We’re all going to see Black Panther,’ and the kids went crazy. It was just the best reaction.”
“It was a whole experience leading up to that movie,” he added. “The kids had lessons on the science behind what they would see in the movie, the math behind it, there were cultural classes. African culture and heritage was infused throughout that experience for the kids.”
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Boseman shared his reaction to the video at the time.
“Oh man, that’s why you do this,” he said on a Feb. 2018 episode of The View. “That’s one of the reasons why I get up in the morning.”
After Boseman’s death, Linsey reflected on what Black Panther meant to him.
“I feel that the movie inspired me by letting me know that I am powerful,” he told THR. “The Black Panther movie was inspiring to me because it taught me that we are powerful as Black people. It also let me know that you should have pride in everything you do. Chadwick Boseman‘s role as T’Challa was important to me because he stood out as a leader that I hope to become.”
