Cases of Black people found hanged in the US South are a reminder of nation's lynching history

The death of a Black Mississippi woman found hanging from a tree has stirred distressing memories of the grim history of lynchings across the U.S. South.

The body of Tasia Fortune, 29, was found behind an abandoned home in Jackson, the state capital, on Aug. 3. Jarques Ratliff, 51, who is also Black, pleaded not guilty to murder on Monday. Police and prosecutors haven’t given a suspected motive and say more arrests are expected.

Regardless of the circumstances of the case, for many Black people, the imagery of a rope and noose evokes the legacy of lynching and vigilante violence against Black people in the U.S. and brings with it deep pain and trauma.

“Black folks down here in 2026, we are feeling and experiencing some of the same things we felt in 1956 and 1966 and that should not be happening,” Jackson activist Brad Franklin said of Fortune's death.

“But because it’s Mississippi and the racist history of our state, our skin has been toughened a lot to deal with it.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: September is National Suicide Awareness Month. This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

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Fortune's mother, Christy Spivey, told The Associated Press that she doesn't believe race had anything to do with her daughter's death. Spivey is white. She said Fortune's father is Black.

“I think this is something very personal, very personal," Spivey said, insisting that someone who was acquainted with Fortune was involved.

Over the past two years, about a half-dozen Black women and men have been found hanged across the South. Police in some of those cases quickly deemed them suicides — often eliciting historically grounded skepticism when investigators provide limited evidence ruling out foul play.

“I say let the evidence show,” said Sean Joe, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis and a nationally recognized authority on suicidal behavior among Black people. “But if ... you go into a definition or a conclusion of suicide, you have to show some evidence for that.”

Spivey says she is certain her daughter would not have killed herself. “Absolutely not. Even if she could climb that tree, no, no, she would never, ever, ever,” Spivey said.

In Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, police are investigating the Aug. 21 death of Demetrius Eugene Fleming, 38. Police Chief Lawrence Wiggins said Tuesday that his office is waiting on reports from a medical examiner.

In February, police in Cobb County, Georgia, found the body of 21-year-old Kyle Bassinga in a park. While investigators said there was no indication of foul play, Bassinga’s death “caused many to think of the days of slavery and of Jim Crow,” said Cobb County Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid.

The September 2025 death of 21-year-old Black student Trey Reed at Mississippi’s Delta State University was ruled a suicide, as was that of Dennoriss Richardson , 39, in September 2024 in Alabama’s rural Colbert County.

Richardson’s wife, Leigh, has said she doesn’t believe he killed himself and, as has occurred in other cases, a private autopsy was conducted, finding his death consistent with a hanging, according to news reports.

Leigh Richardson told ABC News that despite chronic asthma and other breathing problems that would cause her husband anxiety attacks, “that is just not a way that he would even process to leave this world.”

More than 4,400 lynchings occurred in the U.S. between Reconstruction and World War II, according to the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative . The 1955 lynching of teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi over accusations he flirted with a white woman helped catalyze the civil rights movement.

“These were public, intentionally public in order to convey terror, not just to the individuals and their families, but to a whole community,” said Karlos Hill, professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of “Beyond The Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory.”

Nearly 60 members of Congress signed a letter in September demanding the Justice Department investigate hanging deaths of Black individuals and enforce the 2022 Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime.

“In this moment of anti-Blackness and emboldened white supremacy, we cannot stand idly by while the strange fruit of Black bodies hang from trees across the country,” U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley said in a statement.

The Justice Department confirmed it received the letter but has not responded, according to the office of Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat and the letter’s lead author.

Trent Thompson, 58, of Florence, Alabama, says the recent hangings and deaths of Black people led to talk in the Black community about the death this summer of Nolan Xavier Wells .

Wells, 18 and Black, joined friends on a Fourth of July boat excursion to an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast but did not return with them. His body was found two days later. Scrutiny of the investigation has deepened with the state's history of racist violence and distrust of law enforcement — triggering suspicion in the Black community toward many cases involving deaths of Blacks, Thompson said.

"I know the skin I’m in,” he said.

Williams reported from Detroit and Hall from Marion, Kentucky. Associated Press writer Matthew Brown in Washington contributed to this story.