Kanye West Posts Graphic Emmett Till Photo, Responds to Donda Academy Closure

Kanye West took to Instagram on Sunday (Oct. 30) to respond to news that his Christian K-12 private school Donda Academy was closed following recent controversy surrounding the rapper.

Ye shared a graphic photo of Emmett Till, who was tortured and lynched at just 14 years old after being accused of offending a white woman in 1955. He also posted a series of photos of Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, who wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Times last week that West’s business partners, including companies that profit off his music — such as Apple, Spotify, Adidas and his touring partners — should stop working with the star.

Ye references Emanuel by name in his caption, writing, “Can you find a place for the Donda Academy kids to go to school that’s properly zoned for a school? I got about 60 children that have no place to be as they look to transfer.”

He also brought up the Donda Academy basketball team, which was removed by Scholastic Play-By-Play Classics from the season schedule following the rapper’s string of anti-Semitic and racist comments. “They tried to dismantle our basketball team. Those boys are being penalized without reason,” Ye wrote. “Even professional athletes were threatened by their owners to disassociate.”

Ye then referred to his recent repercussions as “what modern post social media #Blackmirror warfare looks like,” adding three bullet points that read “economic lynching,” “digital lynching” and “bankrupting my social credit score.”

“You tried to destroy my life after all the money I’ve made for the ‘business’ people,” he wrote. “At least as I burn to the stake in front of the whole world… // everyone now knows who they need to really be afraid of. And now eeeeveryone knows how much power you ‘Business’ people actually have.”

He continued, “To everyone in the world! // Take me as an example of what will happen if you show any frustration. Your frustration does not matter! We declare today the day when no human is allowed to be human. Please note that I have never physically hurt anyone.”

See Ye’s full post here.

The star’s Instagram account was restricted again on Monday (Oct. 31) following his latest reported violation of the platform’s policies. “We deleted content from @kanyewest for violating our policies and placed a restriction on the account,” a Meta spokesperson told Complex. “We may place restrictions on accounts that repeatedly break our rules, for example, we may temporarily restrict them from posting, commenting, or sending DMs.”

This latest locking of Ye’s account comes after Instagram and Twitter both placed temporary restrictions on his social media accounts after he posted antisemitic comments earlier in October