NAACP Seeks Hate Crime Investigation After Noose Is Tied Around Black Student’s Neck | Sojourners

NAACP Seeks Hate Crime Investigation After Noose Is Tied Around Black Student’s Neck

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As many as four white students were accused of putting a noose around the neck of a black student during football practice at Stone High School in Wiggins, Miss., earlier this month. The President of the Mississippi NAACP is now demanding a federal probe to investigate the matter. 

The confrontation happened during a break in football practice near a locker room, where the noose was “yanked backward” while around a boy’s neck, reports the Associated Press. Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson spoke Oct. 24 at a news conference on the incident:

"No child should be walking down the hall or in a locker room and be accosted with a noose around their neck…This is 2016, not 1916. This is America. This is a place where children should go to school and feel safe in their environment."

Johnson has said he wants the teenagers charged as adults, which is allowable in certain situations for teenagers between ages 13 and 16 in Mississippi. The names and ages of the students involved were not immediately released.

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