Former University Of Mississippi Student Indicted For Hanging Noose On James Meredith Statue
The DOJ has brought civil rights charges against Graeme Phillip Harris for hanging a noose and confederate flag on a statue of the Ole Miss ‘first black student.
Additionally members of Sigma Phi Epsilon are believed to have played a part in the incident.
A former University of Mississippi student was indicted Friday on federal civil rights charges for allegedly hanging a rope and a flag featuring the Confederate battle flag around the neck of a statue of James Meredith, the university’s first black student.
Graeme Phillip Harris was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of conspiracy to violate civil rights and using a threat of force to intimidate African American students because of their race or color, the Department of Justice said.
The rope and an old version of the Georgia state flag, which displays the crossed bars and stars used as a battle flag by the South during the Civil War, was placed around the neck of the statue in the early morning hours of Feb. 16, 2014. Meredith was the first black student after the university was desegregated in 1962.
“This shameful and ignorant act is an insult to all Americans and a violation of our most strongly-held values,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “No one should ever be made to feel threatened or intimidated because of what they look like or who they are.”
A spokesman for the university said Harris withdrew from Ole Miss in the spring of 2014, not long after the incident.
There were others involved, the Department of Justice said. Three members of the University of Mississippi Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter were thought to have hanged the rope and flag around the statue.
They have never been named, but the national fraternity suspended the chapter and expelled the three members from the organization a week after the incident. Sigma Phi Epsilon CEO Brian C. Warren Jr. said it was “embarrassing” that they were members.
The Department of Justice said the investigation is ongoing.
SMH…bye racist beyotch!
