Content warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.
If I am ever found hanging from a tree, it was not my choice—and never let anyone convince you otherwise.
These types of statements, sad as they may be, are becoming increasingly common for Black people across the country to post online. The impetus for these declarations stems from a recent string of suspicious deaths of Black people around the country. Many have been found hanging from trees throughout the South. In most of these cases, local authorities have been quick to rule these deaths as suicides, despite the manner of death’s resemblance to lynching.
As disturbing as this is, the most disturbing part to me is the lack of national outrage. When a young, middle-class white person goes missing or dies under unusual circumstances in the United States, the nation’s informational ecosystem instantly snaps into hyper-drive. Satellite trucks descend on small towns. Cable news networks run twenty-four-hour tickers and interactive timeline graphics. Mainstream media prime-time anchors dissect every line of a police press conference, and millions of Americans join online sleuths in demanding accountability. The country collectively decides that this life mattered, that the circumstances must be painstakingly investigated, and that grief deserves a national audience.
Then there is the other world—the world in which I, as a Black man, find myself. A world where Black men and Black women are found hanging from trees, or whose deaths are accompanied by other suspicious circumstances like compromised crime scenes. There are no prime-time specials. The satellite trucks don’t drive over. Instead, local police departments issue swift press releases, often within hours of a body being discovered, assuring the public that there is “no foul play suspected” and the death is determined to be an “open-and-shut” case of suicide. The national media swallows the official line whole, prints a verbatim regurgitation, and moves on.
This silence isn’t just a failure of journalism; it is a profound moral abdication that leaves grieving families isolated in their horror and grief.
I follow a Black independent journalist named Jeremiah Patterson who has been travelling around the country to investigate these lynchings. One of the top comments on his Facebook post announcing this mission comes from a user who wrote, “Move in silence. Don’t put your blueprint on the internet sir. Be blessed and stand on your square.”
This isn’t new, but it has been exacerbated in recent years. A 2025 report documented more than seventy instances of modern-day lynchings from 2000-2025. It seems, however, that an uptick began in 2022 with the death of Rasheem Carter, a twenty-five-year old Black man who disappeared after contacting police and his mother to report that a group of white men in trucks were chasing, stalking, and threatening him. Weeks later, his severed remains were discovered scattered across a wooded area. Local law enforcement announced there was “no reason to believe foul play was involved.”
Since 2022, there have been plenty of other deaths, including those of Yolna Lubrin in Florida, Dennoriss Richardson in Alabama, Javion MaGee in North Carolina, and Demartravion “Trey” Reed in Mississippi. What is most troubling, however, is the terrifying cadence of suspicious deaths and hangings just this year, including:
Kyle Bassinga (Georgia, February 2026): The twenty-one-year-old student at Georgia State University was reported missing on February 14 and found hanging from a tree in Marietta, Georgia, four days later. Cobb County Police quickly ruled his death a suicide.
Juliana Umba Nzita (North Carolina, May 2026): Nzita, a sixteen-year-old high school student, was found hanging from a tree near a church with a ratchet strap around her neck and a toddler-sized chair nearby. Within three days, the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police closed the case four days later without conducting a full autopsy.
To’Nea Nicole Miller (Florida, June 2026): Twenty-seven-year-old Miller was found dead hanging from a tree in Miami on June 18. Initial public notices from the local sheriff’s office claimed she appeared to have died by suicide and omitted the detail that she was suspended from a tree.
Justice Kai James (Georgia, June 2026): James, twenty-one, was found hanging outside a cafeteria building at the Turner Job Corps facility on June 21, just an hour after fellow students had seen him with his girlfriend. Although police initially told his family the investigation was open and provided few details, authorities officially ruled his death a suicide on July 20.
Jerard “Jay” Jackson (Michigan, June 2026): The twenty-eight-year-old went missing after leaving a music festival on June 30. His body was found hanging from a tree near his rental car, which contained his wallet and keys. Michigan State Police stated it “appeared” to be a suicide with no sign of foul play.
And there are more suspicious deaths of Black people with little to no investigation. Not all of them are hangings. Tyler Smith of Kentucky and Khloe McDonel of Mississippi were both found dead in July of 2026. And there are likely more that remain unknown and unreported.
Perhaps most notable is the case of Nolan Xavier Wells, an eighteen-year-old who died under suspicious circumstances in Mississippi while celebrating the Fourth of July. Wells did not return home from a trip with friends, who did come back; his body was found more than a day later. Inconsistencies in the reported cause of death and witness accounts, and unexplained injuries have shrouded the case in an aura of mystery. Wells’s case has reached the national news—including outlets like CNN, The Guardian, The Associated Press, ABC, and NPR—but only after persistent online pleas from his mother that further investigation was necessary. We still haven’t seen an ongoing national outcry. From my outside view, the investigation seems to have been shoddy and deprioritized; inconsistent statements from officials as well as curious decisions in the autopsy only bolster that feeling. Prominent Black figures like Tyler Perry, Ben Crump, and Colin Kaepernick have all lent various forms of support to the family in an effort to help cover their bills for independent investigations, autopsies, and other expenses.
These cases are often closed with bureaucratic velocity, in part due to negligence and structural problems. In Mississippi, for example, the current measures to conduct these investigations are underfunded and historically dysfunctional. The state frequently operates with a drastically understaffed office to handle thousands of autopsies each year.
When a state coroner’s office is facing a backlog, the system of investigation and subsequent justice creates a perverse incentive to clear cases as quickly as possible. A suicide ruling necessitates minimal follow-up, no homicide team, no expensive forensic testing, and no long-term investigation. Stamping “suicide” on a case folder can more quickly clear the desk. Thorough murder investigations take time, money, and institutional willpower—resources historically withheld when the victim is Black and poor. In other words, this Black life didn’t really matter.
I’m left wondering: if something were to happen to me, something that in today’s racial climate does not seem overly hypothetical, who would care? Would there be an investigation, or would the police rush to judgement? In my senior year of high school, I could have easily been Rasheem Carter. I, too, was chased by a group of white men in a truck after being forced out of a pool hall in my hometown. As someone who calls out white supremacy, I fear for my future. This country has proven time and again that our bodies are expendable, and that white supremacy has been baked into the creation of this country.
Between 1877 and 1950, thousands of Black Americans were lynched across the South—particularly in Mississippi, which has also seen a number of these recent suspicious deaths and disappearances. Historically, white mobs, complicit sheriffs, and local coroners routinely covered up these lynchings by recording the cause of death as suicides or “at the hands of parties unknown.”
When a community carrying the inherited trauma of Jim Crow sees a Black body suspended from a tree or a beam in an abandoned home, they do not see an isolated mental health crisis. They see a crime scene—and a historic pattern of official cover-ups. Historically, public lynchings were used as a warning for Black people to stay in their place. I can’t help but wonder if what we’re seeing now is a coordinated effort to evoke fear in today’s Black community.
Communities are clamoring for answers, which require investigations and the will to allocate time and resources. It also takes a country that recognizes our humanity. These deaths should not live solely on Threads or Instagram or Facebook. They should be headline news everywhere, followed by a nation that wants to get to the bottom of it.
Unfortunately, and dangerously for people like me, the lack of investigations and coverage make this painful reality even more difficult. Earlier this week, Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney General’s office demanding an investigation into the “gruesome, alarming, and disproportionate pattern of deceased Black people hanging from trees or elevated structures in public spaces” throughout the United States. “America spent generations allowing Black people to be lynched while institutions with the power to intervene stood by and did nothing,” Crockett said in a press release announcing the letter. “We cannot repeat that history.”
I posted about these killings on Threads and was quickly inundated with faceless accounts telling me it was all made up. Our fears for the safety and wellbeing of our community are seen as something akin to hysteria, with many others going along with their lives like there is nothing to see here.
So many suspicious deaths, so many Black people hanging, and so little coverage. It would be heartbreaking if it wasn’t so predictable. Send the satellite trucks. Send the news anchors and reporters. Treat this national crisis like the epidemic of hateful acts towards Black people that it is.
It is terrifying that in the time it has taken to publish this article, it runs the risk of being dated. In the past couple weeks, five suspicious deaths have been reported. The speed of this crisis is rapid, yet the lack of national care remains the same.
America cannot continue to look away from the trees and diminish our existence. We deserve forensic rigor, transparency, and a modicum of humanity to at least in death acknowledge our lives. Until that happens, I want you to know: If they ever find me in a tree, I hope you know it wasn’t a choice made by me.