Indiana: Black activist says white attackers threatened to 'get a noose'
A Black man says a group of white men assaulted him and threatened to “get a noose” after claiming that he and his friends had trespassed on private property as they gathered at an Indiana lake over the Fourth of July weekend.
Vauhxx Booker, a local civil rights activist and member of the Monroe county human rights commission, posted cellphone video on Facebook that shows part of the altercation. He said he called 911 Saturday after the men assaulted him and pinned him to a tree at Lake Monroe, south of Booker’s hometown of Bloomington.
Law enforcement officers with the Indiana department of natural resources responded and are investigating, said Capt Jet Quillen. A final report will be forwarded to the Monroe county prosecutor’s office, Quillen continued, providing no other details about what happened or whether any arrests had been made.
The prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to the Associated Press’s request for comment.
In his Facebook post, Booker said that he apologized after the men told him they were trespassing, but that five white men then attacked him. Booker wrote that the men threatened to break his arms and said “get a noose” while telling his friends to leave the area. He also said one of the men had a hat with a Confederate flag on it and that the men made statements about “white power”.
One video clip that he posted shows a white man holding Booker up against a tree. Another depicts a different man calling someone off-camera a “nappy headed [expletive].” In another, the
same man yells, “You invaded us!” and calls someone in Booker’s group a “stupid [expletive] liberal [expletive].”
“We were calm and polite, but looking back now, it’s apparent that these individuals began targeting our group the moment they saw myself, a Black man and were looking to provoke a conflict,” Booker wrote.
Booker said he suffered a minor concussion, cuts, and bruises and had patches of his hair pulled out.
The Bloomington mayor, John Hamilton, and city clerk, Nicole Bolden, issued a statement Monday expressing their “outrage and grief” over what they said was a racially motivated attack.
The state senator Mark Stoops, a Bloomington Democrat, said he was “horrified by the racist attack” and called on the Republican governor, Eric Holcomb, to suspend and investigate the department of natural resources officers who responded to the scene for failing to make any arrests.
“This is not just an issue of violence,” Stoops said in a statement Monday. “This is clearly a hate crime and must be treated as such.”
In 2018, Booker spoke out after a Bloomington Transit employee accused Booker of stealing a bus pass shortly after he bought a ticket. Booker said the employee sold him the pass, then could not find proof of the transaction and called the police. The unnamed Bloomington Transit employee was fired.