Human rights activist finds noose on porch

COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho — The education director of a Human Rights Education Institute in Idaho said someone left a noose on the porch of her home in an apparent threat against the black family.

Rachel Dolezal said she found the noose Sunday morning just outside her front door in Spokane, Wash.

“I spent a lot of time in Mississippi, so when I saw that rope, I knew what it was,” Dolezal told the Coeur d’Alene Press in a story published Wednesday. “You have to learn and practice how to tie a noose. It’s a very intentional thing.”

Dolezal reported the noose to the Spokane Police Department the following day. Department spokeswoman Jennifer DeRuwe said a detective was assigned to the case, and it was being investigated as a hate crime or malicious harassment.

It was the latest in a series of unsettling events for Dolezal and her family. Last week, her home was broken into and $13,000 worth of personal belongings — including two guns — were taken.

Police are investigating the burglary as well. Dolezal and DeRuwe said there was no evidence yet linking the two crimes.

Idaho has long struggled to overcome a reputation as a haven for racists and white separatists. The small town of Hayden in northern Idaho was for 30 years an outpost of the white separatist group Aryan Nations.

Residents largely rejected the group, and a $6.3 million civil judgment against it in 2000 over a violent attack forced the group’s leader, Richard Butler, to liquidate the compound.

The Human Rights Education Institute is located in Coeur d’Alene, where residents have reported racist leaflets being strewn across their yards for several months this year.

Earlier this year, Dolezal said, several white supremacists confronted her while she was working at the institute.

“They asked me if I am biracial, then asked where I live and where my son goes to school,” she said.

Dolezal found it disconcerting but gave them a tour of the building’s exhibits and invited them to future events.

At the time she was living in Coeur d’Alene. A week after the confrontation at the institute, someone broke through the gate of her home, making it into her yard before police arrived and the person fled, she said.

That incident prompted her to move to Spokane, along with the fact that her 7-year-old son wanted to be in a more multicultural school.

Dolezal said she has no plans to leave the area entirely. A security system with surveillance cameras will be installed in the house, she said.

“These things are happening, yes, but there’s so much being done about it. There’s a huge counter-force with human rights education — we are organized like never before,” Dolezal said.

In the meantime, she said she’s trying to keep things normal for her son, who thought the noose was a dog toy. She didn’t explain any further

“For him as a child, the main thing he needs to have in mind is that I’m going to keep him safe,” she said.

Information from: Coeur d’Alene Press, www.cdapress.com