Falsely Accused of Blackface: The Acne Mask, the Mob, and the Fight for Justice
The Dr. Phil Podcast
Dr. Phil McGraw
4.3 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Holden Hughes was a 14-year-old freshman and football player at an elite CaliforniaCatholic school when he put on a friend’s prescription acne mask at asleep over. Three years later, in the summer of 2020 during Covid shutdowns andBLM protests, a parent obtained that old photo, posted it to social media calling it “blackface,” and organized a protest at the school, all within hours. By the next day, St. Francis High School told Holden and his family:withdraw or be expelled. No investigation. No hearing. No due process. In spring 2024, a California jury sided with Holden and set a legal precedent that private high schools must provide fair procedure before expelling students. Dr.Phil sits down with Holden and his parents, Frank and Wendy, to hear his story: what really happened that night, what the mob did to his family, and whether a jury verdict can give back the senior year, and the reputation, that was taken from him.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A private photo, a sleepover, two 14-year-old boys in prescription acne mask, green mask, by the way, |
| 0:16.0 | making silly faces for nobody but themselves. That photo sat untouched for three years until the summer of |
| 0:23.7 | 2020. George Floyd had just been killed. Black Lives Matters protest were erupting across the country. |
| 0:32.4 | Emotions were raw, tensions were high, and someone found that old photo and lit a match. |
| 0:39.8 | They called it blackface. |
| 0:42.7 | Parents demanded actions and within 24 hours, 24 hours, mind you, an elite California Catholic school told those boys, leave now or be expelled. No investigation, no hearing, no due process. |
| 0:59.6 | The school's own admission. It wasn't even about intent. It was all about optics. In my opinion, |
| 1:10.1 | virtue signaling. I've said it before and I'll say it again. What we |
| 1:15.6 | need in this country is a council culture, not a cancel culture. Now let's find out what's really |
| 1:24.3 | in people's hearts before we haul them into the town square. |
| 1:28.9 | These boys were 14 years old. |
| 1:33.5 | Well, last spring, a jury agreed that the school got it wrong. |
| 1:38.7 | Catastrophically wrong. |
| 1:40.8 | Tonight, one of those boys, holding Hughes, along with his father Frank and his mother |
| 1:46.5 | Wendy, are here to tell us what it actually cost him and his family. |
| 1:52.6 | Because I have to tell you, you read these things in the paper, you see a headline, you |
| 1:58.4 | maybe read halfway down through the article, and you go, huh, that's terrible. |
| 2:04.5 | But we don't really stop and think what the impact is on people's lives, real people with real lives. |
| 2:15.2 | And I want to think about that. I want to talk about that. So I want to think about that I want to talk about that so I want to |
| 2:21.0 | welcome Holden and his parents Frank and Wendy so thank all three of you for |
| 2:27.3 | being here today Holden let me let me start with. You were 14 at the time. |
| 2:36.1 | Was there any thought in your mind at all at the time of being racist, disrespectful, doing anything that you thought would be offensive to anyone at any time in any way? |
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