In August 1982, my biological mother wrote a note on a sheet of lined paper. The last sentence read,* “I don’t hurt anymore. Goodbye.” *
She tied a bedsheet around her neck and hanged herself from a heating pipe inside her sister’s house in Montclair, New Jersey. It was a private act that her family has been grieving for more than four decades. Yes, my mother took her own life but what she didn’t do was turn her beautiful Black body into one of the most recognizable symbols of racial terror in American history! She did not go outside and hang herself from a fucking tree.
*Breathe, Stacey . . . *
I’m beginning this piece with that awful moment, because I’m not gonna participate in the myth that Black folks don’t commit suicide. We do. Black men do. Black women do. Black children do. And back in my youth, I even tried because I believed then that dying before age 25 like my mother was my inheritance.
CDC data show that Black people do use suffocation and hanging as a method for suicide. And yes, suicide among rates Black adults and children have been rising at alarming rates. But let’s be clear, method is not setting. More than 70% of suicides occur inside a house or apartment. So a Black woman hanging herself from a heating pipe inside a private home is not a tree beside a church, in a park, on a college campus or a backyard behind a vacant house.
So, I absolutely **REFUSE **to believe that Black folks are out here repeatedly hanging themselves FROM TREES!
According to local reports, since May 2019 at least 15 Black people, including three teenagers, have been found hanging from trees in public or semi-public spaces across the United States. Other folks across social media have been compiling lists. Most of these deaths have been ruled suicides.
And just this week 29-year-old Tasia Fortune was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant house in Jackson, Mississippi. The Jackson Police Department hasn’t said whether they suspect foul play, and her body has been sent to the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy.
In June, 27-year-old Tonea Nicole Miller of Flint, Michigan, traveled to Miami, Florida for Juneteenth. She was found hanging from a tree in a park. Once again, authorities called it an apparent suicide and said there was no evidence of foul play, but her sister said: "If anybody knew my sister To'Nea Nicole, that’s the last thing she would do. She loved life too much.”
The month before, a man walking his dog found 16-year-old Congolese immigrant Juliana Umba Nzita hanging from a tree on the grounds of a Black church in Charlotte, North Carolina. A ratchet strap, which is typically used for securing truck cargo, was found wrapped around her neck and a child-sized blue chair was found on the ground near her. Once again, police classified her death as suicide and her family is questioning that conclusion.
I could keep going down the list and tell you where each body was found, how they were found, what was tied around their necks, and quoting law enforcement concluding “suicide” and “no foul play,” and how the families aren’t buying it. But I won’t because this is depressing as hell. After writing a whole book about the lynching of Black children, I never imagined that I would be sitting here in 2026 compiling a list of Black bodies found hanging from trees.
But here we are again.
I can safely speak for many Black folks and confidently say, these hangings are suspicious AF because they occupy an entirely different historical and symbolic landscape. We have pattern-seeking minds! Are we supposed to look at these scenes and pretend like history never happened? Pretend like there haven’t been more than 4,000 lynchings in this country? Pretend like we don’t know that racist whites didn’t leave Black bodies hanging in public to send a message? Pretend like police, coroners, newspapers, and courts didn’t routinely help conceal lynchings? We know our grandparents and great-grandparents’ stories and we know that Billie Holiday song, “Strange Fruit.” And we also know that the official ruling ain’t always the same as truth.
Now, I can’t sit here and say with any certainty that these 15 Black people found hanging outside were murdered. I know that suspicion and grief are not evidence. But Black folks are not gonna unquestionably accept suicide as a cause because we have learned over and over again that we cannot trust the word of police departments and coroners because of their long history of falsifying causes of death. We know the history of sheriffs who joined lynch mobs and grand juries that declined to indict folks who they know were guilty as hell.
History gives us examples.
For instance, back in 1922, 19-year-old George Tompkins was found hanging from a tree in Indianapolis with his hands tied behind his back with dirt covering his body. Now, the original coroner said that the teen was killed somewhere elsewhere and then he was hung from the tree. But then his death certificate was changed to “suicide,” concealing the truth, and as a result nobody was arrested. His death was finally ruled a lynching one hundred years later, in 2022.
There was also the 1932 case of Shedrick Thompson who was a Black World War I veteran. He was found hanging from a tree in Virginia after an armed white mob hunted, tortured, mutilated, burned and hanged him. They also collected parts of his body as souvenirs. Although historians have treated Thompson’s death as a lynching, his official suicide ruling has never been corrected.
Most lynching cases in America were never seriously investigated. Records were either manipulated or lost. Law enforcement ignored witnesses and family members. And yes, Black folks have repeatedly been told that our people have committed suicide even when their bodies said murder.
I don’t know, Y’all. Maybe there’s a strange twist happening. Maybe all 15 of these cases could ultimately produce persuasive evidence of suicide. If so, then show us the evidence, the ligatures, the timelines, any surveillance footage, interviews with the people who last saw them alive. Let us hear from the independent experts who review the evidence and autopsy reports. All these families are entitled to answers, instead of being treated as obstacles to administrative closure.
I’ve talked with many Black folks who are looking at these 15 gone and are saying they feel like we are being hunted. Honestly, I feel the same. Because we are now living in a country in which white supremacists have ZERO shame. The threats are increasingly public. They hurl the n-word at us on camera. And just about every civil rights apparatus has been dismantled by the Trump regime which has normalized white nationalism and political violence.
So Black folks have to stay vigilant, practice self defense, and not surrender to authorities that want to declare Black death ordinary. At the end of the day, these 15 deaths might not be lynchings. But you cannot place Black bodies in trees, invoke one of the most racially terrifying images in American history, release almost no information, keep telling us “apparent suicide” or “no foul play,” and gaslight Black folks’ suspicion by calling it ignorance or conspiracy.
As my elders always say, “we wasn’t born yesterday.”
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THIS CONTENT IS WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL CAPACITY. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY OR MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.
