A hangman noose in a firefighter's locker has created controversy at a Mississippi fire department.
Hattiesburg firefighter Shelton Russell, a 22-year veteran of the department, was demoted, suspended without pay for a month and required to undergo counseling after two colleagues—one of them African-American—saw a noose hanging in Russell's open fire station locker in August, the Clarion Ledger reports. After the firefighters sent a photo of the noose, Russell confronted his colleagues for “spreading rumors of racism."
“It was like shock at first,” Kentavius Reed, the 24-year-old African-American firefighter who saw the noose in Russell's locker, told officials.
Although the noose is seen as charged symbol of racial violence toward African-Americans, Russell told The Associated Press he was unaware of its offensive meaning. In testimony at an October Hattiesburg civil service commission hearing, Russell said he had been watching a Western movie after a ropes course years ago, and a colleague showed him how to tie a noose, which Russell then put in his locker.
"African-Americans were hung by it. So were whites. So were horse thieves, and you know, I'm a cowboy. I'm out in the country. I ride a tractor every day. That's what I go back to, cowboys and that's how it got started, with watching the Western,” Russell told the AP.
He added that if he had known the noose was offensive, he wouldn't have put it in his locker, according to the Clarion Ledger.
