Ex-Student Pleads Guilty in Noose Incident

Graeme Phillip Harris, a former student at the University of Mississippi, on Thursday pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of threatening force to intimidate African-American people at the university when in 2014 he placed a noose around a statue of James Meredith, the first black student to enroll there, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors dropped a felony charge in return for the guilty plea. Authorities said that Harris had a history of using racist language and making demeaning comments about black people, and that he proposed the idea of placing the noose on the statue to fellow students drinking in a fraternity house.