NOOSE SENT TO BLACK PRINCIPAL IN BROOKLYN

A noose was mailed to the African American principal of Canarsie High School in Brooklyn along with a letter containing racially-charged comments, the New York Times reports.

The mailing was delivered over the weekend to principal Tyona Washington, who is in her first year at the school. The package was opened Monday morning. The letter, found around 10:30 a.m., was signed with the name of a white administrator at the school, police said, adding that they believed that the signature was not genuine.

According to the police, the letter did not make any direct threats but said, “I’ll give you enough rope to hang yourself.” The letter also included the words “white power forever” and included a racial slur, said authorities.

The incident follows a rash of noose-related activity sprouting from the Jena Six case, in which race-based fights were sparked at a high school after three white students hung nooses from a tree to rankle black students.

The Canarsie episode was at least the eighth time in the past few weeks that a noose was discovered in the New York area alone. As previously reported, a noose was placed on the doorknob of the office of a black professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

The hate crimes unit of the Police Department is investigating, but the police said yesterday that there were no suspects. Rev. Al Sharpton was to appear outside of the Federal Building in Atlanta yesterday to announce plans for a Nov. 16th March on Washington to protest the outbreak of hate crimes around the country.


Meanwhile, a coalition of major American media companies filed a 1st Amendment petition Monday seeking to unseal the criminal trial of Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the controversial Jena Six case in Louisiana.


The legal motion, filed in LaSalle Parish District Court, challenges the decisions by presiding Judge J.P. Mauffray to close the proceedings in Bell's juvenile case and order all the parties involved not to speak about it. Mauffray's orders run counter to Louisiana juvenile laws, precedents set by the Louisiana Supreme Court and provisions of both the Louisiana and U.S. Constitutions, the petition asserts.

The Chicago Tribune is the lead plaintiff in the petition, which has been joined by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Co., the Associated Press, the Hearst Corp., the Belo Corp., the Gannett Corp., CNN and ABC News.

Bell, 17, is one of six black teenagers charged in an attack last Dec. 4 at Jena High School in which a white student was beaten and knocked briefly unconscious. That incident capped months of violent racial tensions in the small, mostly white central Louisiana town that was also sparked after the three white youths hung nooses from the tree.