ATLANTA — A rope was found hanging from a tree outside a Black history museum in downtown Atlanta, steps from Auburn Avenue, a historic corridor at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. 

The APEX Museum has stood near the Sweet Auburn neighborhood for nearly 50 years, preserving and sharing African American history.

Workers said the rope, which had a loop at the bottom, sent a clear message, even though Atlanta police are not officially classifying it right now as a noose.

“This was not OK at all,” said Kyler Winston-Kendricks, who works at the museum.

Atlanta police and Georgia Homeland Security responded to the parking lot of the museum on Wednesday afternoon along Auburn Avenue next to the campus of Georgia State University. 

“They’re like, ‘Oh, it’s not classified as a noose, it’s too small…’ I’m like the inference is there,” Winston-Kendricks said.

In a statement, Atlanta police said: “Officers are investigating the circumstances. At this time, there is nothing significant to report.”

Still, Winston-Kendricks said the location of the rope cannot be overlooked.

“We teach people about human history we are specific to Africana history,” Winston-Kendricks said.

“We’re a Black history museum.”

She went on to add, “This is the right moment to talk about it, because we have to have these conversations so that way this can stop happening,” she said.

Winston-Kendricks said the timing is especially painful as the museum prepares for an upcoming exhibition.

“About the 1906 (Atlanta) race massacre, the commemoration for it is coming up this September,” she said.

She explained the rope highlights the need for deeper conversations.

“We need to have those uncomfortable conversations to have comfortable conversations,” Winston-Kendricks said.

She added, “We have to realize we’re one human race, we can talk about other stuff later, ethnicities, cultures but we have to respect one another as human beings.”

The museum’s president, Dan Moore Jr., issued a statement on social media about the incident, saying the rope aimed to “transform a site of learning into a place of fear.”

“Placed beside a museum dedicated to Black life and resilience, the rope reads as an act of intimidation: a clear message intended to wound…silence…and to remind people that the same threats and violence of our country’s past can be conjured in the present,” it reads. 

See the full statement shared on social media here.