North Carolina Race Track Owner Posts Facebook Ad for 'Bubba Rope'

A North Carolina dirt-track owner's Facebook ad for "Bubba Rope" has received criticism from the office of state governor Roy Cooper, Reidsville NAACP chapter president Jeff Crisp, NAACP member Malcolm Allen and many of the poster's social media followers, per Susie C. Spear of the Winston-Salem Journal.

Mike Fulp, 55, offered "Bubba Rope" on the Facebook Marketplace for $9.99 with this description: "Buy your Bubba Rope today for only $9.99 each, they come with a lifetime warranty and work great."

That ad appeared days after a noose was found in NASCAR Cup Series driver Bubba Wallace's garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, per David Close and Jill Martin of CNN.com.

Wallace, who is the only Black full-time driver in the Cup Series, appeared to be the victim of a hate crime, and NASCAR showed its support en masse prior to the Geico 500 the next day:

An FBI investigation soon revealed that the rope functioned as a garage pull and had been there since at least October 2019. However, the garage pull in question was clearly tied in the form of a noose, as an FBI picture revealed, per Jeff Gluck of The Athletic:

Wallace spoke with CNN's Don Lemon after the FBI's investigation was revealed and said the following in part:

"Don, the image that I have and I have seen of what was hanging in my garage is not a garage pull. I've been racing all my life. We've raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that. So people that want to call it a garage pull and put out old videos and photos of knots as their evidence, go ahead, but from the evidence that we have, that I have, it's a straight-up noose.

"The FBI has stated it was a noose, over and over again. NASCAR leadership has stated it was a noose. I can confirm that."

As far as Fulp's ad, the dirt-track owner was condemned by multiple people.

"This incident of racism is horrific and shameful," Ford Porter, who is the governor's deputy communications director, said, per Spear. "North Carolina is better than this."

Crisp added the following comments:

“It is horrible that someone would post something of that nature. It's just absolutely unnecessary in these times of tension. You go back to slavery days and hanging people and calling them 'strange fruit' on the trees because there were so many slaves hanged. This is not the time for comments like this, just causing unnecessary tension.''

Allen also offered some words:

"But the good thing about it is to see the solidarity of all of those race car drivers, marching behind Bubba on the speedway. That lets us know that the majority of us are good people, kind people and on the same page.

"A lot of the time, people do things for attention. And we cannot satisfy and serve their agenda by playing the game with them.

"It’s good to know who they are and where their heart is, but it’s better to look at the bigger picture. ... When we see injustice, we need to point it out. It needs to be dealt with, but in a peaceful way."

Per Spear, Fulp's post upset many of Fulp's Facebook followers.

"Several who described themselves as loyal spectators wrote to Fulp that they would stop attending 311 events because of the post," Spear wrote. "Other people shared screen shots of nearly a dozen of Fulp's older Facebook posts, since deleted."

Fulp owns 311 Speedway, which is located in Pine Hill, North Carolina.