Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions of racism and a photo of a noose. For more information, see our editorial standards.
Dive Brief:
- Black workers found a human-shaped cardboard figurine hanging from a noose with the words “my motivation to work” scrawled across it when they reported to a jobsite last week in Cleveland, according to police and media reports.
- Employees of Cleveland-based O’s Versatility Construction notified police of the potential hate crime on Oct. 24, when they found the item on the 11th floor of 776 Euclid Ave, where they were painting, according to a police report obtained by Construction Dive.
- The employees told police there has been ongoing harassment at the jobsite, with White workers referring to Black workers with a racist slur. When the Black employees packed up and said they wouldn’t work at the site again after finding the display, a White male worker yelled out, “The n—— are going,” according to the police report.
Dive Insight:
Mentor, Ohio-based Cleveland Construction runs the site. In a statement shared with Construction Dive, the firm said the display was created by a subcontractor’s employee, who was subsequently removed from the jobsite.
Mitch DaDante, the company’s equal employment officer, said the company concluded the act was not racially motivated.
“We understand that actions that could be perceived as discriminatory or harassing are still unacceptable, regardless of intent,” DaDante wrote in an email to Construction Dive. “Therefore, although it does not appear, based on our initial investigation, that the alleged incident was motivated by any racial animus, we nevertheless requested that the individual involved not return to our project site.”
The Cleveland Police report categorized the episode as ethnic intimidation and aggravated menacing, which is applied in cases where an individual causes someone to believe the offender will cause them serious physical harm.
DaDante declined to address additional questions regarding how Cleveland Construction concluded the display of the noose, figurine and written message were not racially motivated.
‘A symbol of violence’
Nooses appearing on construction jobsites have gained widespread attention since George Floyd’s murder in 2020. They occur with enough frequency that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a data category to track them.
In 2021, workers found as many as eight nooses at an Amazon jobsite in Connecticut, resulting in a lawsuit against the e-commerce giant and its contractors that argues the companies promoted a hostile work environment for Black and Brown workers by not doing enough to prevent the nooses’ appearance.
That lawsuit, filed in federal court in Connecticut, argues that “The hangman’s noose is widely known to be a symbol of violence and hatred directed towards Black and Brown men. Because the noose was historically used as a tool to kill men of color, it is now used to communicate an intimidating threat of violence.”
Kenneth Krayeske, a civil rights lawyer at BBB Attorneys in New Haven, Connecticut, who was not commenting directly on the Cleveland jobsite display, said nooses are hate symbols widely equated with illegal lynchings of African Americans before and after the Civil War.
“A noose means you're going to die,” Krayeske said. “It’s strange fruit. We have a long and horrible history in America of lynching.”
