The Lynching Of Black People In The South
According to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), the most recent research indicates there are more than 4,400 documented instances of lynching of Black people that occurred between 1877 and 1950. When EJI expanded its research backward through Reconstruction (1865–1876), it identified nearly 2,000 additional Black victims. EJI therefore estimates that there are nearly 6,500 documented instances of lynching of Black Americans between 1865 and 1950. The true number was almost certainly higher because many killings were never reported or documented.
This article hits close to home for me. My father's side of the family is from Mississippi. My father-in-law's family is from Alabama.
My father's entire family migrated from Mississippi during the Great Migration, which was a journey that many Black people from the South took to escape the brutal existential realities of white terrorism and limited economic opportunities. As a result of an altercation with a white man, in which he refused to bow down and accept his so-called "inferior" status in a small town in Louise, Mississippi, my Black father had to leave his home to escape a potential lynching by white folks.
My father-in-law's brother was in the process of being strung up for a lynching by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Alabama, from which he barely escaped by an inch of his life. As a result of this experience, he never mentally recovered from this act of white terror. In addition, my father-in-law's best friend's wife worked as a domestic in a white family's home in Alabama. One day, the white man who employed his wife raped her. My father-in-law's best friend went to the home of this white family to confront the man who raped his wife. When he arrived, the white man shot him dead from his porch like he was a dog in the street. When he heard what happened to his best friend, my father-in-law got his gun and was on his way to the white man's house, who murdered his best friend, to avenge his death. On the way there, his father stopped him, took him home, packed his belongings, and put him on a train away from Alabama.
As I stated earlier, this article hits close to home for me. These seminal events shaped my militancy and molded me into the revolutionary I am today.
"The body of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, a mother of four, was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned house in Jackson, Mississippi. Fortune isn’t the only Black person who’s been found that way recently. Over the past year, she is one of at least four Black people — ages 21 to 38 — who have been found hanging from trees in the South, and at least the second in Mississippi. The body of 21-year-old freshman Demartravion “Trey” Reed was discovered on Delta State University’s campus last September by football players on an early-morning run. In North Carolina last month, officials took down the bodies of a 32-year-old Black man in Raleigh and 38-year-old Demetrius Fleming, a father of nine, in Roanoke Rapids." (1,1)
Nothing provokes alarm in the South more than the body of a Black person dangling from a tree, and when state officials call it suicide, pervasive disbelief from Black people should be expected.
The Mississippi Free Press reported in July that Trey Reed’s girlfriend provided investigators with text messages from him the night before he died that indicated he was going to commit suicide.
"Research shows that hanging is the most common method of suicide among young Black people, even if it doesn’t show a high incidence of Black people hanging themselves outdoors. Another important caveat is that the research focuses on Black adolescents, and the four Black people found hanging in the South over the past year were adults. (Overall, hanging is the most common suicide method among U.S. children, while firearms are a more common method among adults.) Across all age groups, white people die by suicide at a higher rate than Black people — and Native Americans die at a higher rate by suicide than white people — but KFF reports that between 2014 and 2024, suicide rates in the United States “increased more among people of color” than among white people and that the largest rate of increase, 53%, was seen among Black people." (1,2)
Mississippi authorities ruled the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune a homicide. A Black man, 51-year-old Jacques Ratliff, was arrested for her murder. During his initial court appearance on September 14, Ratliff pleaded not guilty.
Regarding the publicly unnamed 32-year-old Black man found hanging from a tree in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, on August 15, 2026, I searched for developments through September 22 and have not found a subsequent public announcement showing that the medical examiner has issued a final autopsy report, nor have I found credible reporting that the FBI/DOJ has opened a homicide or federal lynching investigation into this particular Raleigh death.
As of September 22, 2026, the death of Demetrius Eugene Fleming, 38, in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, remains an open investigation.
In light of the racial history of white terrorism perpetrated against Black people in amerikkka, it is prudent for Black people to demand thorough investigations of all lynchings in this wicked country.
Sources
"'Highly unusual’ trend of Black hanging deaths in the South has Black people considering two awful explanations" by Jarvis DeBerry, MS NOW, September 15, 2026 - https://www.ms.now/opinion/highly-unusual-trend-of-black-hanging-deaths-in-the-south-has-black-people-considering-two-awful-explanations
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