Surveillance video captured the employee creating the noose with rope used to seal coin bags and walking across the factory floor on 28 June

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

An employee at the US mint in Philadelphia has been placed on administrative leave after a noose was found on the chair of an African American colleague.

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The president of the mint workers union said the unidentified employee created the noose with rope used to seal coin bags once they’re full. Around 3pm on 28 June the white male coin maker walked across the factory floor with the noose in hand.

Surveillance video captured the entire activity, including the employee’s actions. Many African American workers called and texted the union president the next day, and the US treasury department inspector general launched an internal investigation.

A treasury spokesman said the department has “absolutely zero tolerance for the kind of misconduct reported at the mint”.



Nooses have recently been discovered in a number of public places in the US, including three found in the vicinity of museums on the National Mall in Washington DC.

Nooses are potent and divisive symbols of the Jim Crow era of segregation and racially motivated mob violence in southern states. Recent cases at southern colleges have seen nooses hung on a tree and a monument to a civil rights icon.

The nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative said there were 4,075 lynchings of blacks in the south to spread racial terror between 1877 and 1950. For African Americans, the noose is “comparable in the emotions that it evokes to that of the swastika for Jews,” the Anti-Defamation League said.