NEW YORK, Oct. 12, 2007
Noose Found Near Ground Zero
One Of Many Cases Nationwide; Surveillance Video To Be Studied In Rope Probe At Columbia U.
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Professor Madonna Constantine speaks at a protest rally at Teachers College at Columbia University, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, in New York, one day after a hangman's noose was discovered on her office door at the college. State Senator Bill Perkins, D-Harlem, left, also attended the rally. (AP Photo/Diane Bondareff)
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Professor Madonna Constantine, right, speaks at a protest rally at Teachers College at Columbia University, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, in New York, one day after a hangman's noose was discovered on her office door at the college. State Senator Bill Perkins, D-Harlem, center, also attended the rally. (AP Photo/Diane Bondareff)
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The exterior of Teachers College at Columbia University is seen Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, in New York, one day after a black professor discovered a hangman's noose on her office door at the college. (AP Photo/Diane Bondareff)
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Interactive Civil Rights In America A look back at the key people and events of the civil rights movement.
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Photo Essay Rally In Jena Louisiana town at center of racism debate after black teens are charged in beating of white student.
This one, police say, was hanging from a light pole outside the Church Street post office, near ground zero. Postal workers on the second floor noticed it at about 1 p.m. Thursday, at which point the building management company removed it and police are now investigating.
There is no indication on whether the noose - the murder weapon of choice for lynchings and as a result, a symbol of racial oppression - was a threat aimed at a specific person.
There is also no indication on whether there is any connection to the incident earlier in the week at Columbia University. Police there are considering all possibilities - including a disgruntled student or colleague - in tracking down whoever left a noose on the door of Madonna Constantine, a black professor who teaches a class on racial justice.
Police Thursday began downloading 56 hours of surveillance camera images from Columbia's Teachers College campus, a day after the school turned the tapes over under pressure from investigators. They said the school's refusal to give up the tapes without a court order held up the investigation of an incident that has shaken the Ivy League campus. The college said it was trying to cooperate, but privacy laws required a court order before the tapes could be given to police.
Police also are testing the 4-foot-long piece of twine for DNA evidence and interviewing students and faculty.
So far there are no suspects in the case.
"I'm upset that our community has been exposed to such an unbelievably vile incident," the professor, Madonna Constantine, told hundreds of faculty and students who held a raucous rally Wednesday. She described the incident as a "blatant act of racism" and said it "reeks of cowardice and fear."
Last year in Jena, La., three white students hung nooses from a big oak tree outside the high school, inflaming racial tensions which are on the rise again now, following a jail sentence for a key figure in that case which the Rev. Al Sharpton is calling a "cruel and unusual punishment."
Other nooses have cropped up at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the Hempstead Police Department locker room.
A senior White House official said that the Justice Department has opened its own investigation into the Columbia University incident, reports CBS News' Peter Maer. The FBI, the U.S. Attorneys office and the Civil Rights Division are looking into the case.
Press Secretary Dana Perino says President Bush has been briefed on the recent series of noose incidents.
"He does not see this is what America really stands for," Perino said. "These are hopefully isolated incidents and he understands how hurtful they can be to people."
Civil rights leaders have been pressing the administration to step up federal efforts to prosecute hate crimes, Maer reported.
Morris Dees, founder and chief legal counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been tracking incidents like this for 35 years.
"It's popping up all over the place," Dees told CBS Early Show Co-Anchor Harry Smith. "I think maybe Jena, Louisiana, possibly has caused some copycat situations."
Thousands of demonstrators, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, converged on Jena on Sept. 20 to decry what they called a racist double standard in the justice system. They protested the way six blacks were arrested on attempted murder charges in the beating of a white student, while three whites were suspended but not prosecuted for hanging nooses in a tree in August 2006.
The noose evokes the lynchings of the Jim Crow South and "is a symbol that can be deployed with no ambiguity. People understand exactly what it means," said William Jelani Cobb, a professor of black American history at Spelman College in Atlanta.
He said the Jena incident demonstrated to some racists how offensive the sight of a noose can be: "What Jena did was reintroduce that symbol into the discussion."
As word of the Jena case began circulating, reports of similar incidents arose.
In July, a noose was left in the bag of a black Coast Guard cadet aboard a cutter. A noose was found in August on the office floor of a white officer who had been conducting race-relations training in response to the incident at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.
In early September, a noose was discovered at the University of Maryland in a tree near a building that houses several black campus groups.
On Sept. 29, a noose appeared in the locker room of the Hempstead, N.Y., police department, which recently touted its efforts to recruit minorities.
On Oct. 2, a noose was seen hanging on a utility pole at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama.
Last week, the president of historically black Grambling State University in Louisiana announced he would seek sanctions against five teachers who participated in a lesson on race relations that included placing a noose around the neck of a child at a mostly black, on-campus elementary school.
The Columbia investigation also follows the arrest on Sunday of a white woman on hate-crime charges alleging she hung a noose over a tree limb and threatened a black family living next door in New York City. The two incidents were "the first noose cases in recent memory" in the city, said Deputy Inspector Michael Osgood, commander of the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force.
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Add a Comment See all 99 Comments
- You know what would be funny if the proferror put it there for his own ends and played victum it''s in the relm of possibility cheak his DNA the vast majority of college kids are to smart to do anything that stupid but a failed student or angry lover is also a possibility or a faturnity prank to stick up for a brother, Thers a lot of unanswered questions here to me a prank in very poor taste.
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- must be one of those disease ridden nascar fans hangin these nooses up.
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- Robjk1 you said...as long as there is people and the devil there will be racism.
And I totally agree with you.. People who come to other countries always say that there is racism in the way the people treat them but in their home countries there is racism there also so why single out the countries of their adoption.. It isn''t right but as Robjk1 says where there are people there will be racism, shame but it is true.. and really I don''t blame people... We went on holiday to America and as we were leaving the motel the cleaners had just finished the room next to us so they went into the room that we had, but about 5 minutes down the road we realized that left behind some brand new cloths in a bag that we had brought in that town, so we rang the motel, and they rang back to say that they couldn''t find it.. we knew where we had left it and they were new.. so of course it left a nasty taste in our mouths for those people who were doing the cleaning..all it needs is a few instances of that and there would quickly grow a feeling of dislike and distrust against that race..we had already been warned against that race, so this didn''t help..
We did our best to not let the image of our country of origin (New Zealand) down.. We now live in Australia. - Reply to this comment
- One thing the liberals don''t understand: you''d be hard pressed to find a jury of 12 people who would convict ANYONE for this. It may be clear to liberals that this is a so-called "hate crime", but to most thinking people this is a prank, a sick joke, and tantamount to free speech. Doubt me? OK, name just ONE conviction for a similar crime. Where is the precedent? Sorry, this is NOT something that is black and white. You will NOT get a conviciton on this with 98% of juries.
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- Who cares? This is NOT news. These welfare collectors need to quit whining and go get a job. We don''t need a million whiners who think their lifetime mission is to cry and whine and be overly sensitive. Just get to work, improve your lot in life, and shut the f*ck up.
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- Brought to you by the Association of Rope & Twine Manufacturers.
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- CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, and all of you, quit reporting this stuff nationally. The more this is reported, the more that goofballs will do it just to see the news story.
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- Robjk1, typical "white-trash" BS comment, how is hanging a noose, a crime, it is symbolic of lynching, therefore, it constitutes a hate crime...
It is considered "fighting words", a gesture of lynching blacks, a hate crime, go back to your cave in the Caucasus Mountains and spout this nonsense.
And no your inane comment is not an excuse for black criminal behavior, only an excuse to beat the "cra[p] out of someone like you for hanging a noose on public/private property...
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Posted by kailumego1
Obviously, you didn''t read the rest of my posts. My question is on how could it be prosecuted as a crime? like what law could be used to do it. Of course, it''s wrong and should be against the law but what law are on the books to do it.
No need to respond to the rest of your lacking post. - Reply to this comment
- Up till here recently, the Jena events actually, the noose just symbolized a lynching or hanging to me. You know? Like on bonanza, the rifleman or the movie Maverick. It didn''t imply racism.
I personally don''t see how an expression could justify a physical assault no matter how vulgar the message. The rule of self defense is to only use as much force as necessary to overcome an aggression. Beating a person unconscious, then beating him some more would hardly be justifiable no matter who the guilty party might be. - Reply to this comment
- "Hanging a noose" is an act of terrorism, and if you can condone aggressive military actions against foreign terrorist for the onslaught of attacks against the U.S., then you can also condone aggressive actions against domestic terrorist threating citizens within U.S. borders.....
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- I understand why some blacks feel the way they do about some white folks, it is because of white folks like the ones posting here that forge mistrust and animosity in some blacks....
To actually allow yourselves the stupidity to state hanging a noose means absolutely nothing is insane in itself, and demonstrates the malignant depravity within this country...
How can any rationally sane human-being allow such written and spoken words to seep from their mouths and hands, hanging a noose is no crime.... - Reply to this comment
- Robjk1, typical "white-trash" BS comment, how is hanging a noose, a crime, it is symbolic of lynching, therefore, it constitutes a hate crime...
It is considered "fighting words", a gesture of lynching blacks, a hate crime, go back to your cave in the Caucasus Mountains and spout this nonsense.
And no your inane comment is not an excuse for black criminal behavior, only an excuse to beat the "cra[p] out of someone like you for hanging a noose on public/private property... - Reply to this comment
- It''''s a knot. In a length of rope. Stop reporting this.
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Posted by downtowner97 at 11:12 AM : Oct 12, 2007
Would you say the same if the knot in the length of a rope was around your neck? - Reply to this comment
- It''s a knot. In a length of rope. Stop reporting this.
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Oh my god this is totally unacceptable....I think this gives me (a black man) the right to go loot ,steal and do basically whatever the hell I want now. A noose big whoop. Move on you mental midgets.
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Posted by superchez1 at 11:04 AM : Oct 12, 2007
I was asking how is it a crime as in what law was violated so it can be prosecuted. It is unacceptable and something should be done, but I was was wondering under what law.
Your response confirms some blacks feel justfied in their criminal behavior.- Reply to this comment
- How is a noose a crime?
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- I''ve always thought all crimes against another are hate crimes. I guess there must be love crimes, since I''m wrong.
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Not a problem NYC has camera every where the guilty should be prosecuted under for hates crimes for the anxiety, stress and the instigation of hate crimes this has caused.
But there is a silver lining in these criminal ignorant acts, they again put a spotlight on the threat to our country that the right wing ideologues bring, the code of discrimination legitimized by the extreme fringe political sect within the GOP. Also means the pansy are afraid again, oooooooooohhhhhhh Obama is BLACK and could be President, fools. They are talking hate code out there on our public air waves represented as dumb acts by those supposed former Opiate addict and Murdoch owned media types some think they are not accidents. Maybe some legal action on implied code hate on our nation owned air waves needs attention now maybe some entertainment types should share in the charges filed, did not that happen when Hollywood movies where claimed to have incited acts of evil.- Reply to this comment
- "This is just the natural progression of the hate and bigotry that the Bush election team has enabled. You cannot keep playing the intolerance card and think people will not think that intolerance is ok. The Repubs market to this crowd.
Posted by afmca at 09:35 AM : Oct 12, 2007"
Wrong answer. If you haven''t noticed, Bush''s team has been the most diverse executive team in the history of the U.S. - Reply to this comment
