US: Noose put around black high school student's neck

NEW YORK

Activists on Monday demanded a federal investigation after white students at a high school in Mississippi put a noose around the neck of a black student and 'yanked backward', according to media reports.

State president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a leading black civil rights organization, urged authorities to open a federal investigation following the Oct. 13 incident at Stone County High School in Wiggins.

"We're calling on federal investigators to view this as a racial hate crime,” Derrick Johnson said Monday during a news conference. “This is 2016, not 1916.”

Hollis and Stacey Payton, the parents of the unnamed black student who is a sophomore football player, were also present at the conference with Johnson but did not speak.

The state of Mississippi was one of several pro-slavery states during the Civil War in the formation of the United States. The state flag continues to feature the controversial Confederate Flag, and did not officially end slavery until 2013. The constitutional amendment that abolished the practice was signed at the end of 1865.

Last year, a former student at the University of Mississippi -- also known as Ole Miss -- was sentenced to six months in prison for placing a noose around the neck of a James Meredith statue that honors the civil rights activist who integrated the university by becoming the first black student to be admitted.

The perpetrator was also convicted of threatening black students on the campus.

Stone County's resident population of 18,000 is 78 percent white and 19 percent black.