In Trump’s AmeriKKKa:
Lynching Noose Found at National Museum of African American History and Culture
June 2, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Wednesday, May 31, visitors at the exhibit on segregation at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, were horrified to find that someone had put up a lynching noose in the gallery. The noose was quickly removed and the exhibit reopened. But as Lonnie Bunch, the director of the museum, said, “The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity—a symbol of extreme violence for African-Americans. Today’s incident is a painful reminder of the challenges African-Americans continue to face.”
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is part of the Smithsonian Institution, and only four days earlier, another lynching noose had been found hanging outside another Smithsonian museum, the Hirshhorn.
These lynching nooses at the Smithsonian are part of a series of KKK-type noose incidents in recent years that have become even more common since the election of Trump/Pence. An article at Smithsonian.com noted, “These ominous reminders of America’s dark history with lynching have appeared around the country, from a school in Missouri to a series of four nooses hung around a construction site in Maryland. Other nooses have been found on the Duke University campus, the Port of Oakland in California, a fraternity house at the University of Maryland, a middle school in Maryland, and at a high school in Lakewood, California.”
And these lynching nooses—aimed directly at terrorizing Black people—are in turn part of a larger ugly wave of more than 1,300 acts of hate, intimidation, and violence directed at immigrants, African Americans, LGBTQ people and others just between the November 2016 presidential election and February of this year.
One woman who was visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture with her six-year-old daughter when the noose was found said, “It’s shocking that in 2017 we still have this type of bigotry.” Yes, it is shocking and outrageous. But this is a country founded on slavery of kidnapped African people and genocide against Native people, and white supremacy continues to be deeply woven into the fabric of this system today. And with the Trump/Pence fascist regime in power, a go-ahead has been given to an open revival of KKK-style terror. Everyone of conscience needs to speak out about this and act to stop it, as part of the fight to drive the whole regime out.
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