A noose was allegedly found in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American Culture (SNMAAC) in 2017, but the results of the ensuing investigation were never released and police dodged multiple new inquiries from the Daily Caller News Foundation about what happened.
The SNMAAC claimed to have found a noose in one of their exhibits in May 2017. The museum founding director Lonnie Bunch called the act cowardly and depraved in a statement on Twitter the day of the incident.
“The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity — a symbol of extreme violence for African Americans,” Bunch said in the statement. “Today’s incident is a painful reminder of the challenges that African Americans continue to face.”
A statement from our Founding Director Lonnie Bunch on the noose found in our history galleries today. pic.twitter.com/sFWVSaobhV
— Smithsonian NMAAHC (@NMAAHC) May 31, 2017
Although the original claim received widespread media coverage, the FBI never got involved and there has been no official update on the investigation’s results, no arrests and no official statement from authorities dubbing the incident a hate crime.
“It was found on the floor of an exhibition. Park Police did the investigation,” Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas told the DCNF in an email. “We have many visitors in that museum and I know they never found the person who dropped it. FBI was not involved, just Park Police who handle problems on the National Mall.”
St Thomas — when pressed and asked if the museum had video of the incident — said, “No as I said, the whole investigation was handled by Park Service police. If we had any video it would have gone to them.” (RELATED: Here’s A List Of Fake Hate Crimes Involving Nooses)
The DCNF then contacted Park Police public information officer Sgt. Eduardo Delgado, who said Friday that the results of the investigation would be given on Monday. The DCNF never received the information nor did it hear back from Sgt. Delgado four days later at the time of publishing, despite repeated attempts to contact him through phone and email.
A similar incident that later turned out to be a misunderstanding happened earlier this month when NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace reportedly found a noose in his vehicle garage. An FBI investigation later determined that the “noose” was simply a garage pull that had been present since 2019.
Wallace — before the results of the investigation came to light — was quick to call the incident racist in a statement posted to Twitter.
“Today’s despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism,” he said in the statement.
— Bubba Wallace (@BubbaWallace) June 22, 2020
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