As has been pointed out in previous posts, nooses are strongly associated with lynching, especially in the American South and especially when hanging from a tree. A noose in a gallows has an altogether different meaning – implying the law has been involved; whereas a noose in a tree is vigilante “justice”. African Americans were lynched in the past for trivial “offenses,” which not only served to maintain an unfair social order but also to devalue the lives of an entire group of people. Hanging a noose in the “white” tree after a black student sat there was meant to be a symbol- most likely that the black student had stepped above his “place” with the implied consequences that he, or any other black student who did the same, would be in danger of violence if not of being lynched. The fact that there was an understood “white tree” at all clearly shows sustained cultural tensions in the area where the ideas the noose was meant to convey are unlikely to be forgotten. Whether or not the student(s) who hung the noose would have actually followed through, the threat was very clearly and succinctly conveyed with that image that harkened back to a shared cultural history.

This situation in itself, even before media involvement, demonstrates Lippmann’s proposal that "Pictures have always been the surest way of conveying an idea .... But the idea conveyed is not fully our own until we have identified ourselves with some aspect of the picture." The white students didn’t need to say anything to the black students. The noose said everything, and everyone, both black and white, understood its meaning because they grew up with it as part of their culture.

Once it became news, others outside the Jena area could also understand because a noose in a racial incident means a threat of lynching. The organizer is not trying to redefine a noose. The organizer is instead recognizing that this picture, which represents an implied threat, is being posted on websites to in fact threaten these students and convey hate. “And it all started in Jena” seems more a lament that the symbol was brought back into the public eye, and the hatred is there everywhere “now when you turn on the TV.”