The Department of Public Safety says the nooses were accompanied by handwritten signs referring to Tuesday’s election.
JACKSON, Miss. — State and federal investigators are trying to find out who hung seven nooses in trees outside the Mississippi Capitol early Monday, a day before a U. S. Senate runoff that has focused attention on the state’s history of racist violence.
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety says the nooses were accompanied by handwritten signs referring to Tuesday’s election as well as to lynchings – most of them in the state’s turbulent past, but also one recent case that remains under investigation, of a black man whose body was found hanging in central Mississippi. The department posted photos of the signs on social media and sought information about them from the public.
One sign referred to the Tuesday runoff between appointed Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is white, and Democrat Mike Espy, who is black. The sign also read: “We need someone who respects the lives of lynch victims.”
Another sign read: “We’re hanging nooses to remind people that times haven’t changed.
