Noose incident sparks protest
A black 15-year-old in Mississippi shook in fear as he described how white schoolmates put a noose around his neck and pulled it tight, leaving no physical scars but perhaps a life-changing emotional wound, his mother said Thursday.
Stacey Payton, a 47-year-old college instructor, said her son met her in her office and told her about the Oct. 13 incident a few hours after it happened in a high school locker room.
“His first words were, ‘Mom ... please stay calm. Don’t panic. I don’t want you to call the school because it’s already been handled,’” Payton told The Associated Press. “When I was looking at him, he was shaking and the expression on his face — he was horrified. He was very fearful.”
She expected him to say he had received a bad grade or had gotten in trouble for talking in class.
“And he said, ‘Mom, they put a noose around my neck and they pulled it tight and it choked me.’ And I just instantly — it was like a chill went over my body.”
The Stone County Sheriff’s Department is investigating. Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson is calling for federal authorities to investigate a possible hate crime. The FBI said it is aware of the incident but wouldn’t confirm or deny an investigation.
The teen is quieter than usual but is still attending classes and playing football at Stone High School in Wiggins, a logging community in the piney woods about 40 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
Payton described her son as peaceful and said he was friends with the boys involved. Up to four white students took part, the family said.
The school district’s attorney, Sean Courtney, wrote in an email to AP that only one student was accused of misconduct, according to statements from witnesses. Courtney said that student has been suspended from school “pending the conclusion of the disciplinary process.” Following district policy, Courtney did not release the student’s name. Payton didn’t want to release her son’s name.
Courtney said there was no report of any raciallyinsensitive language or any indication of what the motivation may have been.
Some Stone County residents said it sounded like a prank among teenagers who might not know Mississippi’s history of lynchings.