The first-year football coach at Mississippi State University has been reprimanded and must visit a civil rights museum after he recently shared a meme on Twitter of a woman knitting a noose, the university’s athletic director said this week.

The coach, Mike Leach, 59, who has since apologized for the post, also must participate in a series of listening sessions to “expand his cultural awareness” of the state, John Cohen, the athletic director, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The meme, which Leach posted on April 1 and later deleted, featured a black-and-white image of an older white woman with knitting needles. Its caption read, “After 2 weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf.”

But instead of a scarf, a hangman’s knot was on the woman’s lap, an image that critics said was highly offensive and evoked the lynchings of black people in the Deep South. At least one player on the football team has announced his plans to transfer because of Leach’s tweet.