A Black Doll with Beads Fashioned into a Noose Given to 12-year-old During Parade

A Mardi Gras parade in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi left an African American family with a memory they would rather forget.

On her Facebook page, Nicole Eley-Fairconeture asked for help identifying a truck with a man riding on it who called her 12-year-old daughter over and give her a black doll known as a Mammy doll with beads fashioned into a noose around its neck. Fairconeture and her daughter expected the man to pass her beads as is the custom during a Mardi Gras parade. The child and her mother were shocked.

In an interview with CNN, Fairconeture said the man told her daughter, “That’s you.”

Fairconeture posted on her Facebook page that the Waveland Police Department is investigating.

Comments on Fairconeture’s social media post were overwhelmingly supportive. One read, “This is not OKAY”. Another stated, “Your one little girl is worth 10,000 of that kind of guy. Be blessed, be strong, may love overcome hate, may good triumph over evil.”

One of the posts, however, spewed disapproval. The author wrote, “And I bet all these people eat Aunt Jemima syrup on their pancake poured from a bottle shaped like a little old black lady…puh-leeze…anything to get 15 minutes of fame. Tomorrow it will be old news because it’s fake news anyway…”

Apology from Parade Organizers

As word of the incident made news around the country, the Krewe of Nereids, sponsors of the parade offered an apology. On the group’s Facebook page, a post read in part:

“The Nereids organization does not condone or agree with this behavior and has never approved of, nor in anyway affiliated with Nereids, other than parading on the same day. The Nereids organization does not condone or agree with this behavior and has never approved of or supported any offensive conduct in the past, nor will such offensive conduct and racially divisive acts be tolerated or excused now or at any time in the future.”