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“A woman in Marietta, Cobb County, was taking a walk around her neighborhood when she spotted her neighbor’s decoration, which she believes depicts a lynching. Hanging from a tree on the front lawn was a realistic hooded dummy with a noose around its neck and its arms and legs tied. The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said she was shocked and upset by the decoration. She took a picture and shared it online. ‘I just feel like Halloween is not an excuse to use that kind of symbolism,’ the neighbor told WSB-TV Atlanta. She is referring to the lynching of black people in the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Between 1877 and 1950, nearly 600 black people were reportedly lynched in Georgia.”

“The decoration has sparked online criticism from Twitter users. Other users see the decorations as just that, decorations. A tweet from Comedian Ricky Smiley said ‘What would you do if your neighbor put up a noose for Halloween?’ Another user was even more outraged and tweeted, ‘Halloween display? Halloween is a MONTH away. Y’all know what this is…’ But other Twitter users think the display is harmless. One person tweeted, ‘Wow really people. You see horror movies with hanging bodies but you see a prop with nothing but a bag as a head and you scream racism’.”

“A reporter from WSB-TV said he went to the home to speak with the owner about the decoration. A man answered and said it was his roommate’s. However, when the reporter revisited the home, the decoration had been removed. The anonymous neighbor said other neighbors didn’t see a problem with the decoration. ‘This is 2017. We need to change it, and if that is your typical Halloween decoration, then it’s absolutely not okay,’ she said. ‘It was not okay when we did it back in the day, and it’s not okay now.’”