Don Allen is a Black, disabled U.S. military veteran with three Hamline University degrees, two Hamline editorial-writing prizes, seven years teaching high school English in Saint Paul, an active full-time teaching specialist appointment at the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts teaching Strategic Writing and Media in a Changing World — — and fifteen years of contemporaneous Black-press reporting on Minneapolis education policy through Independent Business News Network at and Our Black News .
He is, by every credential Minnesota teacher licensure tracks, the candidate Black Men Teach claims to exist to recruit. Black Men Teach has not recruited him. Black Men Teach, by his public account and the absence of any rebuttal, has refused to collaborate with him at all.
Black Men Teach, Inc. — EIN 83-1629682, founded June 2018, GuideStar profile at , website at https://www.blackmenteach.org/ — states its mission as recruiting, preparing, placing, and retaining Black male teachers in elementary schools so that Black male students see Black male teachers in their classrooms.
The Philanthropy News Digest profile at and the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder coverage at articulate the same student-centered rationale.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s December 9, 2025 complaint in United States v. Special School District No. 1 —, announcement at — identifies the Black Men Teach Fellows provisions of the Minneapolis Public Schools / Minneapolis Federation of Teachers collective bargaining agreement at as a race-and-sex-conscious classification that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
When three TikTok-ers, boys aged 11-13, goaded Mr. Allen threatening to murder him and rape his wife while filming his reaction. His wife was recovering in the hospital from breast cancer. Mr. Allen, a veteran Minnesota media producer, saw what was happening.
He calmly said to the lead antagonist, “you are a coward”.
The hysteria this simple pushback catalyzed among pearl clutching administrators, the principal and the board could itself make a comedy hour. Mr. Allen was later ‘sentenced’ by the Attorney General’s Office to pay to take a remedial education class, Mr. Allen himself used to teach less senior teachers. He would lose his license and livelihood if he did not comply.
Days later the TikTok trio posted this video of themselves in a Mpls School Bathroom.
His wife has since recovered, but his career went out the window for the slightest pushback young black men need and the system refuses to provide.
The federal complaint is the public record. The exclusion of Don Allen is the public record.
The retaliation against him for reporting the exclusion is the public record. The unchecked escalation pattern of preteen boys with guns in Minneapolis Schools bathrooms is on record.
The question the title asks — how are these young men served by retaliation against Don Allen? — is not a rhetorical flourish. It is the operational test of whether the program serves the students it names or whether it serves the institution that operates it.
A program designed to place the most capable available Black male teachers in front of Black male elementary students passes its operational test when it selects the most capable available Black male teachers. Don Allen is one of those teachers.
He is the Hamline-credentialed, AP-trained, veteran-protected, university-faculty, prize-winning candidate every fellowship sales deck claims as the prototype. He has been excluded. The students who would have learned from him have not learned from him. They have learned from candidates the program selected over him. The program’s selection-discretion authority has been protected. The students’ access to him has not.
A district that retaliates against Black employees who report internal mismanagement will retaliate against a Black journalist who reports the same substance from outside. The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder of February 20, 2025 — documents former MPS employees Sadiq Ahmed and Montique McCoy alleging their careers were derailed by district HR leadership after they raised concerns about that same leadership.
Both men are Black. The pattern is documented. Don Allen’s exclusion fits the pattern. The retaliation against him does not serve Black male students. It serves the institutional positioning of the program that excluded him.
Minnesota’s Veterans Preference Act, Minn. Stat. §197.46 — — does not include an “underrepresented populations” carve-out. The federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act at 38 U.S.C. §4301 et seq. — does not authorize a public employer to subordinate veteran-status preference to a collective bargaining provision that channels positions to a private organization’s fellowship.
The DOJ Civil Rights Division Service members and Veterans Initiative at and the U.S. Department of Labor VETS at have jurisdiction over the violation. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Veterans and Service Members section at has nominal jurisdiction. The Minnesota AG has defended the contract. The federal apparatus has filed.
The students do not benefit from a fellowship program that protects its institutional positioning against credentialed critics. The students benefit from teachers in their classrooms.
Don Allen is a teacher.
His license has been threatened and the retaliation scheme is being used to prevent any further advancement all by a contractual mechanism the federal Department of Justice now alleges is unlawful. Every day the mechanism continues to operate is a day Black male elementary students in Minneapolis Public Schools do not learn from a Black male veteran teacher who could be teaching them.
The retaliation against Don Allen does not serve those young men. It demonstrates, in the most explicit terms the institutional record permits, that the program serves the program.
The federal Title VII complaint is the federal civil-rights enforcement apparatus’s response to the demonstration.
The case proceeds in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. Don Allen’s reporting was in the record before the complaint was filed.
The Minnesota Attorney General is the defendant. The Attorney General’s wife is in the Mpls school board.
The students are the constituency the institution claims, and the constituency the institution has not in fact prioritized.
