In early June, as the nation faced widespread protests over the murder of George Floyd, a Charlotte resident said she found two knots hanging at a local Home Depot. She told a local news station that she was surprised to find the knots openly exposed on store shelves.
House deposit (HD) He released a statement saying he was “horrified and disturbed by the incident.”
But it wasn’t the first time Home Depot was alerted to ropes in its stores. As a result, the company has decided to sell shorter, pre-cut ropes rather than ropes wrapped on large reels.
“Unfortunately, we have had some cases where coiled rope was used to create hate symbols and we are not going to tolerate it,” Home Depot spokeswoman Margaret Smith told CNN Business on Thursday.
The hangman’s noose knot is widely regarded as a threatening symbol of racism and hatred. In American history, rope knots were commonly used to hang African-Americans during routine lynchings that have terrorized black communities since slavery.
House deposit (HD) He said the change in the rope sales policy was a precautionary measure.
In 2016, a Home Depot employee in the Pittsburgh area filed a complaint after discovering a rope hanging in the rope aisle inside his store. And last year, a Home Depot in Wilmington, Delaware, was attacked after sisters Lisa and Lyonni Flowers reported finding ropes hanging in the store’s rope aisle.
The symbolism of the ropes is particularly relevant, as companies and institutions across the country engage in a conversation about systemic racism.
NASCAR officials recently released a photo of a rope that hangs in the garage stall of NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, who is black. NASCAR staff found the knot at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on June 21, authorities said.
An FBI investigation determined that the incident was not a hate crime after investigators discovered that the rope had been hanging on the post since October last year.
“It was a rope,” Wallace said in response to the FBI investigation. “Whether it was tied in 2019 or whatever, it was a rope.”
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