Readers React: Hanging a noose is terrorism, not a prank

To the editor: I read this article on “pranks” involving nooses with deep concern for our country and its people. The hangman’s noose and what it represents is a dreadful part of our history. (“The ominous symbolism of the noose,” Op-Ed, Oct. 27)

But one word is never used in the article: “terrorism.” The noose represents a special brand of American terrorism that must be addressed for what it is. It is exactly the same kind of cruel and mindless effort to terrorize a person or a group of people who are considered unequal and different.

Whether it is American in its origin or German, Japanese, Arabic or a part of any other fringe fascist mind-set, it is despicable and should never be condoned by a society claiming to be civilized.

Anthony Lawrence, Woodland Hills

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To the editor: I am a white male. At age 16 I was running from an extremely violent stepfather, who happened to be white.

Desperate to escape, I was hitchhiking from Tampa to New York one night. A black man picked me up and we rode into Georgia. He refused to let me onto the highway when he got off it; instead he brought me to his little house and, with his wife, made up the couch for me. They gave me breakfast and towels for a warm shower and only then allowed me back on the highway.

Various rides came, including two whites who did disgusting things in front of me. In South Carolina, an old black lady and her teenage granddaughter, maids who worked for a white family, picked me up and counted their every dime to put me on a bus to New York. This was 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and blacks were set upon by dogs and fire hoses.

How dare anyone declare, “God hates black people,” which would include these black saints that saved my life and whom I wish to meet in heaven some day. Perhaps God hates narrow-minded hate mongers.

Louis Cimino, Santa Monica

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