Johnny Lloyd: Noose Down at Neighbor's Request

By KATE SPINNER
kate.spinner@heraldtribune.com
PUNTA GORDA -- The noose that once hung beneath a Confederate flag on Scott Street is gone, after a brave neighbor convinced the property owner to take it down. Johnny Lloyd, an elderly black man, walked into the bar where Michael Whiteaker works and spent an hour there until his neighbor understood how the noose had the potential to divide the community and start a race war.

"Everybody in there wasn't on my side," Lloyd said. "Everybody in there was Southern boys."

Having known Whiteaker for 40 years, Lloyd knew how to reason with him. He mentioned the negative message the noose sent to the black children in the neighborhood and how it was drawing "look here's" to the street who responded in outrage.

"If somebody thinks that's a hate signal, then why not take it down?" Lloyd asked Whiteaker. Whiteaker could not be reached for comment. The noose had been dangling beneath a sun-bleached Confederate flag for about three years until a recent complaint ignited outrage in the community.

For many people in the United States, a noose, especially coupled with the Confederate flag, is a sign of intolerance toward blacks. Among black residents and leaders, the symbol brings back painful memories of lynchings and other violent acts driven by racism. But Lloyd said he believed Whiteaker's use of the noose was a misguided attempt to keep thieves off his property, rather than antagonize people of color.

"That rebel flag and that noose was meant for any crook. Any outlaw knows that he's weird, so don't be messing around his place," Lloyd said. For the same purpose, Lloyd said he sometimes cracked a bull whip, which sounds like a gun shot, "just to make sure somebody knows not to mess around over at my place."

As soon as Lloyd asked Whiteaker to get rid of the noose, he was met with resistance, he said. He said the first thing Whiteaker asked him was, "Who in the hell sent you?" When Lloyd told him Punta Gorda's city manager was behind the visit, he received further resistance.

Patrons at the bar grumbled about the city not having any control over Whiteaker's neighborhood. Whiteaker's home is just a few blocks away from the city limits, but people have been calling the city to complain about the noose, said City Manager Howard Kunik.

"We thought maybe taking a kind of low-key, reason type of approach might work, and it did," Kunik said. Lloyd, whose first job for the city was to take down the "colored" signs on the bathrooms at the Laishley Park fishing pier in 1972, said all it took was patience and "love" to get through to Whiteaker.

"I don't think he would have taken it down for too many other blacks but me," Lloyd said. "He's got a good heart, but he's a redneck."