Symbol of hate still in the news

Section: SoundOFF

Lolis Eric Elie

Let's begin with a recent local history of nooses.

Four years ago in Jefferson Parish, defense attorneys Clive Stafford-Smith and Billy Sothern filed a motion to ban parish prosecutors from wearing neckties emblazoned with nooses to court. Though three prosecutors said they didn't see the ties as inappropriate, the Jefferson Parish district attorney ultimately enacted a rule barring such garments.

Then, in perhaps the most infamous case of late, a noose was hung last year from an oak tree in Jena. That action heightened pre-existing tensions between black and white students at Jena High School and played at least some role in the racially-tinged assault that left a white student injured and several black students accused of assault.

Just last week, Slidell Mayor Ben Morris fired an employee who had fashioned a noose from electrical wire and hung a paper figure from it. The proximate cause of the firing was the failure of the employee to attend a disciplinary hearing. But the employee, who is white, seems to have been sending a message to his supervisor, who is black.

Unhappy Halloween

If we were to expand our recent history of nooses beyond Louisiana, we might include the story of Madonna Constantine, a Columbia University Teachers College professor who last month found a noose on her office door. Constantine is black.

Moving beyond the black-white factor that has been such an important element of the history of knotted ropes in America, we also would have to include a recent Halloween story from New England.

In Chicopee, Mass., a man adorned his house this year with a Halloween decoration that included a portrayal of a witch hanging from a noose. Kelly Lynch, a self-described witch, took offense. Lynch told reporters that the home's owner, who was not named in several reports of the incident, told her to lighten up.

Perhaps he feels that because the Salem witch hunts are so deeply buried in our distant past, the image of a witch in a noose shouldn't bother anyone. But as Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" reminded us in the 1950s, American witch hunts may be more cyclical than historical.

The image of a witch in a cinched rope reminds me that witches -- along with blacks, Communists, Sicilians and other ordinary Americans -- all have found themselves hanging, literally or figuratively, from the business end of a noose when our thirst for blood has outweighed our thirst for justice.

Message of hatred

Actual lynchings and witch hunts are much rarer these days than they once were, and I doubt we are on the verge of a new era of noose justice.

Still, the symbol of the noose remains scary by implication, and the use of it to send a message is not coincidental. It's a potent reminder that extra-judicial justice is still alive in the minds and memories of some Americans.