Theatre workers fired after tying nooses in stage ropes

City officials on Wednesday defended the firing, and won a vote supporting the decision from the Memphis suburb’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen.

‘It is the symbol of hatred and bigotry,’ city administrator Patrick Lawton said.

But some thought city officials overreacted and did not think that the knots ‘ associated by many in the South with racial lynchings ‘ were an intentional racial threat.

‘I’ve seen plenty of stagehands whittling their time away by tying all kinds of knots,’ said Bob Hetherington, chairman of the department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Memphis.

‘If they were trying to send a racial message of any kind, the fly system of a theater would be the last place anyone would see it.’

But a black city employee saw the nooses and complained about a hostile work environment.

Matthew Strampe, technical director of the Germantown Performing Arts Theatre, was one of the workers fired, along with Michael Laraway and William Martin.

‘I was working with a gentleman I had never worked with before and we were talking about how to tie different knots,’ Michael Laraway told The Commercial Appeal. ‘I asked him if he knew how to tie a bowline and he said yes. Then I asked him if he knew how to tie a hangman’s noose, and I showed him.’