Hanging Halloween Figure Causes Neighborhood Uproar

A Connecticut home, laden with goblins, pumpkins, police tape and a grim reaper, came under protest because of one ghoulish adornment that some say resembled a hanging black man.

Area neighbors, clergy and black leaders alike called it an "offensive symbol of racial lynchings" and wanted it taken down. Friendship Baptist Church reverend, Johnny Gamble contacted police on Saturday after noticing the hanging figure. He approached the decorated home on Monday to confront the owners, shouting "Suppose my great-great-grandfather were lynched, like thousands of blacks were! This is sickening and sadistic." "It's all just for fun. It's not like we said, 'Let's go out and get a display that included a black man being lynched', Joyce Mounajed said. Mounajed shares the home with her daughter. On Monday evening, Mounajed said they weren't going to succumb to community and police pressure and take it down. "This is our property and no one is going to tell me I can't put up whatever Halloween decoration I want to," she said. However, after a closed door meeting with the Mayor, Police Chief and various community leaders, Mounajed decided to oblige, and removed the macabre ornament. Instead, she decided to put the figure on her front steps with a knife piercing through its heart. "We don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, that was not the intention," she confessed. "After speaking with the mayor and the others, we decided to take it down. Nobody forced us to do it".