Story Highlights • Noose was hanging in area accessible only to white managers

• Black workers questioned white managers, got few answers

• Noose eventually removed, workers take legal action

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NEW YORK (CNN) -- James Jackson, a 26-year-old black employee of 180 Connect, was preparing for another day of installing cable, telephone and Internet service to residential customers of Cablevision in Nassau County, New York on December 7.

When he walked to the fenced-off area to pick up equipment for the day's jobs he looked up and was shocked to see a vicious, racist symbol in his workplace. A noose was hanging in the fenced-off equipment area, visible to the dozens of installers, the majority of whom are black, but accessible only to his boss and an equipment manager, bothhe asked his white boss, Gary Murdock, why a hangman's noose was in his workplace. He says the response was: To hang two black employees.

"He said, 'Yo, I like that, it's cool, I am gonna hang Russell up there. Think we can get James up there?' " Houston recalls Murdock saying. "I looked at him like, 'You serious.' "

Jackson says he continued to ask that the noose be taken down, and openly recorded the following conversation with Willie.

Jackson: "Who's that for, the rope?"

Willie: "For anybody who goes past that door that I don't want them in there."

Jackson: "Hang 'em?"

Willie: "Yeah."

Company says it has no tolerance for racism

After a week of complaints, the noose finally came down. The next day, December 14, the installers went public with their gripe,