Kendrick Gonzalez, a Black man from North Carolina with a clean criminal record, was working his dream job as a schoolteacher and coach in 2023 when he received a call from human resources informing him he was being fired for having been arrested on several felonies, including breaking and entering and possession of heroin.
It was a shocking call that turned out to be a lie. And it nearly destroyed his life.
The 38-year-old U.S. Army veteran remained unemployed for a year after being terminated from the middle school where he had been working for only a short period, was rejected from more than 100 jobs, and came close to losing the home he shared with his wife.
Turns out, it was a childhood friend with a long criminal record who used his name after being arrested for breaking into a hotel — a man named Kemardrick Sherrod who did not even look like Gonzalez, other than his skin color — a detail noted in the police report…