The fight to retire Placerville's noose should serve as a warning, in this time of support for Black Lives Matter, that change will not happen quickly.
Mike Saunders talks about Placerville’s infamous “noose of justice” almost dispassionately. Even when, on one recent sweltering afternoon, he told me about unnamed people threatening to use it on him, he ended the story with a resigned shrug that masked the frustration in his eyes.
For more than a century, there have been dust-ups over both the noose and the “Hangtown” nickname, the latter of which was adopted in the mid-1800s, when mostly white residents would frequently act as jury and executioner, stringing up mostly people of color whom they had judged to have committed crimes.It was early June, and protests — some peaceful, some not — had erupted all over the country in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
It was only two years ago, after all, that Bowtie Barbershop in downtown Placerville was forced to apologize after a photo of a Colin Kaepernick doll hanging “Native people get left out of the conversation, even though, in this case, I feel certain they were the primary victims of mob justice or vigilantism or whatever you want to call it,” said Brendan Lindsay, a history professor at Sacramento State.Thinking otherwise was a mistake I made the first time I wandered into Placerville, not long after moving to California from the Midwest.
“You have a culture that’s been here since the beginning of time,” Taylor said. “And then you feel like somebody is now invading and saying, ‘You’re racist. We want you to remove all this, and there’s a threat.’ It’s created a horrible atmosphere.”
Malaysia Latest News, Malaysia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
‘Harley Quinn’ Ditches the Joker and Gives an Underserved Character Her Due (Column)Harley Quinn’s story has always been a love story. Since her first appearance in “Batman: The Animated Series” in 1992, the psychiatrist turned pinwheeling hellion has always overflowed with spirit…
Read more »
Essential Arts: A city's lynching tree logo and 'horrific' vigilante historyThe Times' art critic takes a verbal ax to Placerville's lynching logo, plus more from the world of arts.
Read more »
Should You Be Wearing Gloves During COVID-19?'People think of gloves as magic bullets, and they are not. They are another source of contamination,” says Ravina Kullar, an infectious-disease specialist, epidemiologist, and spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America
Read more »