A noose or not? Rope stirs hard feelings in Evergreen
EVERGREEN» A rope tied around the neck of a sculpture of a female figure titled African Queen has stirred hard feelings in this mountain town after a picture of the vandalism was posted on social media and reported to the sheriff.
Angie Mays, a white Evergreen resident, saw the vandalized sculpture on May 11 while showing a friend, who is black, around town. The two had eaten lunch and were strolling around the Bergen Village Shopping Center where the metal sculpture sits in the middle of an open-air seating area that overlooks Bergen Parkway and the rolling green hills that surround the town.
Mays said she and her friend stared in anguished silence at the sculpture. For them, the rope symbolized the lynching of a black person, a disgraceful piece of America’s history.
“If you’re looking at a person of color respond to a piece of art work that is a person of color being hanged, it is anything but a joke,” Mays said. “It was humiliating because I was showing off my community to her and this is what we stumbled upon. I looked at my friend’s face and
saw the disappointment. I couldn’t take that away from her.”
Mays recorded a short video clip of the rope around the sculpture’s neck. Then, employees of nearby businesses, who said they hadn’t noticed the rope earlier, helped Mays and her friend take it down.
Mays and her friend called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office to report the vandalism. She also reported the incident to Documenting Hate, a ProPublica project that is collecting stories of hate and discrimination in the United States. The Denver Post is a partner in the project.
The incident is being investigated as a property crime, said sheriff’s office spokeswoman Jenny Fulton. The sheriff’s office has not labeled it a hate crime. Investigators don’t for sure know it was a noose because the rope was removed before deputies arrived, she said.
The sculpture was not damaged.
Later, Mays posted a short video clip of the vandalized sculpture to Evergreen’s community Facebook page. Things turned ugly, she and other townspeople said. Some looked at the picture and said they did not see a noose or anything offensive. Those people, then, were labeled as racists by others, multiple people said.
On Friday, no one who worked or shopped at Bergen Village Shopping Center wanted to talk about the incident. Business owners especially wanted to distance themselves from the controversy. One white woman, who did not want to be identified, said the rope was a piece of baling twine and didn’t see it as a noose.
The African Queen sculpture is one of 34 pieces in Sculpture Evergreen’s permanent collection, said Tricia Rosenthal, a member of Sculpture Evergreen’s board of directors. For nearly 25 years, the organization has hired artists to design sculptures that are placed around town, and they are a source of pride for the community, she said.
Rosenthal called the rope’s placement “absolutely offensive.”
“That’s a shame,” she said. “There’s so much that is positive about the sculptures and there’s so much community support for them.”
The situation is representative of the current climate in the United States, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.
Race relations are at their lowest point since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which were triggered by the acquittal of four white police officers who had beaten Rodney King, a black man, Levin said.
Hateful incidents can be hard to address and are embarrassing for communities.
“We’re very divided and we’re very entrenched in our divisions,” he said.
But avoiding the issue is not helpful, he said. Neither is an attempt to dismiss the whole thing as a prank.
“People who aren’t familiar with the history of lynchings are just oblivious,” Levin said.
Posting the video and pushing the incident into the public view have been difficult, Mays said. Some people have been critical of her for making it public.
“I’ve got to stand up for what’s right,” she said. “I’ve got to stand up for my friend.”
Mostly, though, Evergreen residents have been supportive because they do not want their town to be viewed as a place that is unwelcoming, Mays said.