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Federal investigators and states are looking for who hung seven knots in trees outside the Mississippi Capitol Monday morning, a day before the US Senate meeting that drew attention to the history of racist violence in this state.
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety said that the flowing knots were accompanied by handwritten signs referring to Tuesday's election as well as to the lynchings – most of them falling within the tumultuous past of the state, but also a recent case under investigation, of a black man whose body was found hanged in central Mississippi. The ministry posted photos of social media signs and asked for information about them from the public.
One of the signs referred to the second round of Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, white, and Democrat Mike Espy, black. The sign also said, "We need someone who respects the lives of the lynch mob victims."
Another sign said, "We suspend links to remind people that times have not changed."
Hyde-Smith drew fire for a photo showing her wearing the replica hat of a Confederate soldier, as well as a video showing the praise of a supporter saying: "S & # 's 39, he invited me to a public hanging, I would be in the first row. "She said that the pending remark was an" exaggerated expression of respect "for the partisan, but that these remarks provoked sharp criticism in a State with a black population at 38%. She apologized "to anyone who was offended".
Espy is trying to become the first African American American senator in Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Neither Espy nor a spokeswoman for the Hyde-Smith campaign would want to comment on the case.
Chuck McIntosh, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration, who oversees the Capitol, said that flowing knots and signs had been discovered shortly before Monday morning in front of the Capitol, downtown from Jackson.
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety, the Mississippi Capitol Police and the US Attorney's Office are investigating.
"With our law enforcement partners, we are actively investigating these acts of hate and intimidation," US attorney Mike Hurst said in a statement. "Let's be perfectly clear: these unacceptable symbols and tactics to intimidate others are absolutely helpless in our state.If we find evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that a federal crime has been committed, these criminals will be quickly prosecuted. "
Republican Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves, who has an office in the Capitol, has called the agreements and placards "reprehensible".
Mississippi has a history of racially motivated lynchings. The NAACP website indicates that between 1882 and 1968, there were 4,743 lynchings in the United States and that about 73% of the victims were blacks. Mississippi had 581 lynchings during this period, the highest number of any state.
Civil rights activists were also beaten and killed in Mississippi while they were demanding the right to vote for African Americans, particularly from the end of the Second World War until the 1960s.
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Jeff Amy, writer at The Associated Press, contributed to this report.
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