In June of 2020, social media was up ina rms after news that a noose was believed to be found in Wallace’s garage at Talladega Speedway in Alabama. Soon the FBI would investigate and later determine that Wallace was not the subject of a hate crime. Rather, the “noose” was simply a pull-down rope for a garage.
Before that happened, however, it was still pretty scary for Wallace as his father would inform him that he needs to get a weapon to protect himself in the aftermath of the incident.
Via The Sun:
“In the meantime, Wallace said he attempted to assure himself that he was “going to be fine” though he was concerned for his safety.
He called his father, Darrell Wallace Snr., who asked him: “Do you have a gun?” When Bubba responded that he didn’t, his dad warned: “Well, you need to get one.”
The following day, before the race was due to begin at Talladega, all 39 other NASCAR drivers pushed Wallace’s No. 43 car to the front of the grid in a show of solidarity.”
Wallace had successfully called on NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its events in June 2020. Two weeks later, NASCAR told Wallace a noose had been discovered in his assigned stall at Talladega Superspeedway. The incident also occured at the height of a national racial reckoning following the murders of Black men George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.
Once the FBI dropped their report, Wallace was ridiculed, with Donald Trump accusing him of perpetrating a hoax, even though Wallace never discovered or saw the noose.
Netflix’s six-part series on Wallace is debuting on February 22.
