It’s been nearly 16 months since Bubba Wallace was waiting out a rainstorm in his motorhome in the Talladega Superspeedway infield when NASCAR informed its only full-time Black driver that a noose had been found in his garage stall.
Wallace never saw the noose, never even stepped foot in the garage. It wasn’t Wallace who called in the FBI — NASCAR did that — and from what he’d been told, Wallace was led to believe he’d been the victim of a hate crime.
When the FBI later ruled that the noose had been fashioned to the end of a garage door pull during NASCAR’s visit to Talladega nine months earlier, making it mere coincidence that Wallace was assigned that stall, he was subjected to a barrage of online vitriol that spread to the grandstands at several tracks in the aftermat
Not even in this pinnacle moment of his career could Wallace escape the doubters who somehow believe he cooked up the noose as a hoax in June 2020 to garner support during the nationwide racial reckoning following the death of George Floyd.
Wallace was not a victim of a hate crime, but the hate has followed him since he became vocal in matters of social justice and successfully called on NASCAR to ban the display of the Confederate flag at its events.
Source: USA Today
