Lynching by Suicide: The Rebranded Face of America’s Racial Violence – The Chicago Crusader

By Stephanie Gadlin
[Crusader Update: According to activists working with the family of Trey Reed, a second, independent autopsy revealed the DSU student had blunt force trauma to the back of the head possibly indicating a homicide, in direct conflict of the initial suicide ruling. This story is developing.]
Once carried out in the open by bestial white mobs, activists say lynching of Black Americans has been rebranded in modern America as rulings of suicide, leaving families to question official rulings in a mounting number of suspicious deaths.
This past weekend, 21-year-old Delta State University (DSU) student Demartravion “Trey” Reed, who was found hanging from a tree on campus on September 18, was memorialized as an outstanding student, responsible son, and a person who was both outgoing and well-liked by teachers, classmates and friends.

Cleveland, Mississippi, where DSU is located, is a small city in Bolivar County, in the Delta region. It sits along U.S. Highway 61, about 120 miles south of Memphis, 110 miles northwest of the state capital and just 35 miles from where Emmett Till was lynched 70 years ago. The state has a long and storied history of racial violence toward African Americans.
DSU, founded in 1925, is a predominantly white institution, originally established as a whites-only teacher’s college. The first Black students enrolled in fall 1967 to strong opposition and racial backlash. The university has an endowment of roughly $38 million (per 2021 figures); and undergraduate tuition is about $8,435 annually before room, board and other fees.

Trey, the first in his family to go to college, had only been on campus for about 30 days. After Reed’s death drew local to national concerns of another lynching, university officials and the county coroner quickly stated there was no evidence of foul play even before autopsy results or a police investigation were completed, according to activists. Within hours of notifying the student’s family, his death had been ruled as suicide. An autopsy later confirmed the decision.

The Cleveland Police Department announced in a statement that the “findings were consistent with the department’s initial investigation.”

The Crusader reached out to DSU for comment and received no response. The school’s President Daniel Ennis said during a Sept. 17th press conference, “Our community is deeply saddened by this loss. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of all those impacted by Trey’s loss. The preliminary report from the Bolivar County Coroner’s Office indicates no evidence of foul play.”

What would make a student, who friends claim was both upbeat, friendly and exhibited no signs of depression suddenly take his own life? The first narrative claimed Reed walked out of a dorm on Sunday night and for unknown reasons climbed a tree and hung himself before his body was found at 7 a.m. the next morning.

However, activists the Crusader spoke with shared a different narrative that they say raise considerable doubt that Reed lynched himself. According to Andrew Joseph, field coordinator for Black Lives Matter Grassroots (BLMG) rapid response team, the freshman, dressed in a hoodie, jogging pants and Crocs, had just finished completing a paper due the following morning in his dorm room, allegedly according to a roommate. After submitting his paper, just before its deadline, the student left to see his girlfriend in another dormitory between nine and 10 p.m.

BLMG should not be confused with the national Black Lives Matter network that received over $300 million in donations that top leaders were accused of using for luxury homes and other perks. The local group, with chapters active for years before “Black Lives Matter” became a social-media slogan, was later “co-opted by highly paid consultants who pilfered the people’s purse and stole from organizers and families,” an organizer said.

The group says it never charges families for support. Members have been in Mississippi helping the Reed family, including interviewing reluctant witnesses who distrust law enforcement.

“We found out (Trey) got a phone call and that was why he is seen (on camera) pacing in front of the building,” Joseph said, acknowledging information and tips were still coming in. “We don’t know who he was talking to. That’s the last time anybody heard from him. He was found the next morning partially hanging in a tree from a belt that was three times his size. Trey was short and had a slight frame, and his roommate said he didn’t leave with a belt. He was wearing jogging pants with a drawstring waist, a hoodie, a doo-rag and Crocs. Contrary to a lot of stuff in social media, he didn’t have broken bones and hadn’t been beaten up.

“He was found near the pickleball court which is located near the spot where the white kids hang out in their jeeps and pickup trucks drinking, smoking and playing music all night,” Joseph continued. “It’s well-known on the campus that that was the one spot that didn’t have cameras. It is a lie that his death is on camera. That spot was also near the place where a Charlie Kirk memorial was erected.”

Kirk, a popular conservative activist, was gunned down on September 10th, while speaking to students at Utah Valley University.

“I feel the campus is only concerned about its public image,” Joseph said. “Not only did they lie to Trey’s mother and tell her he had died in his dorm room, but they also carried on with that weekend’s football game as if nothing happened. (DSU) doesn’t want the stain of a lynching because that will impact enrollment, fundraising and the school’s reputation.”

The Crusader attempted to reach the Reed family before the filing of this report but was told they “didn’t have media training,” and weren’t available. However, Jeremy McQuell Bridges, founder of the Building Bridges Coalition, a Mississippi-based group composed of civil rights organizations, new Black Panther and self-defense groups, community-based organizations and churches, spoke on their behalf. He said he has been on the DSU campus investigating the case and clarifying conflicting reports.

“The evidence nor the facts support the ruling of suicide,” Bridges said. “He was found only partially hanging, and the medical examiner could not determine the time of death. There weren’t any bruises or ligatures around his neck that would indicate he had been strangled or had been dangling by a rope for several hours. It appears to us he was manually choked someplace else and then his body was put in that tree.”

He also told the Crusader, Reed had “gotten into it with white males” days before his death. “We have copies of text messages and other information that proves (Trey) had an altercation with some white boys on campus,” he said. “The screenshot shows us that he was in conflict a day or two before he died and that it started online.

“Trey came to the defense of a young sister who was being attacked for comments she made about Charlie Kirk. He was defending her and started arguing back and forth with four white guys. Two are students on the DSU campus—and we know who they are. We’re still investigating this to see if there’s a connection,” Bridges said.

Activists also allege Reed’s cell phone was absent from his returned possessions, but “the GPS tracker was still active, and his mother observed the device moving throughout the county,” Joseph added. “If his cell phone is supposed to be in evidence, why is it moving from location to location?”

Another activist alleged the family was told Reed sent two texts before his death including one that read, “the buckle broke.” However, “neither print out had a timestamp or date” and “the large belt found around his neck was missing a buckle. It wasn’t on the ground and police haven’t located it anywhere. Are we supposed to believe he hung himself, threw away the buckle and then sent a text? We know from history that lynch mobs love to keep souvenirs from their crimes,” Bridges said.
The family is represented by famed personal injury Atty. Ben Crump, who spoke at Reed’s funeral. Results of a second autopsy, reportedly paid for by former NFL star Colin Kaepernick, are pending.

Reed’s case wasn’t the only suspicious death of an African American days after the Kirk assassination. In Houston, the bodies of six African Americans were recovered from Houston waterways between Sept. 15 through the 20th. Only one has been publicly identified–Jade “Sage” McKissic, 20, a University of Houston junior reported missing Sept. 11 and found four days later in Brays Bayou. Authorities said her autopsy showed no signs of foul play and that the deaths are not linked. The other five people remain unidentified.

Though it is unusual to find a half dozen bodies, found deceased in a similar manner, in a five-day period, Houston officials said there’s “no evidence of a serial killer” and causes of death are pending with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Online speculation about the Texas case includes the probability of lynching.
THE NEW RED RECORD
It has been 130 years since Ida B. Wells published “The Red Record,” a manifesto recording 537 lynching deaths in a one-year period between 1893 and 1894 and more than 10,000 completed or attempted crimes since the end of slavery. Most were concentrated in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, but Black people in northern cities fared no better.

According to Congress, lynching “is a federal hate-crime offense: when two or more people conspire to commit a hate-crime under 18 U.S.C. § 249 and death or serious bodily injury results (or the offense includes kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, attempted killing, or aggravated sexual abuse)” with a penalty of up to 30 years in prison.

In other words, lynchings are mob violence outside the courts, historically used to enforce white supremacy, punish and intimidate African Americans. Methods include hangings, shootings, beatings, stabbings, burnings, torture, drownings, and sexual assaults resulting in death, etc. They often include mutilations, castrations, and pre- and post- communal events and family-centric celebration of the crimes.

In the 1955 case of Till, the Chicago 8th grader who was abducted and murdered while visiting Mississippi relatives while on summer vacation, he was beaten, tortured, stabbed and shot before his white, adult male killers tossed his small body, tied to a cotton-gin fan, into the Tallahatchie River.

Hate crimes have risen sharply throughout the U.S. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) logged 7,314 incidents in 2019 and 11,679 in 2024, the highest on record, according to the Department of Justice. In 2023, anti-Black or African American targeted incidents made up 51.3 percent of race/ethnicity motivated hate crimes — more than three times higher than the next racial/ethnic category.

In today’s tense racial, economic and political climate, are lynchings on the rise? Despite the rebrand, recent incidents suggest patterns are emerging.

On March 8, 2025, Qaadir Malik Lewis and Naazir Rahim Lewis, 19-year-old twins from Lawrenceville, Ga., were found dead with gunshot wounds at the summit of Bell Mountain in Towns County, Georgia. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation first described the case as a murder-suicide, but then on May 21, 2025, ruled it a double suicide.

Family members dispute the ruling and point out unusual circumstances. The Lewis twins were enroute to visit family, had airline reservations, unused tickets still in their wallets and had “never been to Bell Mountain,” according to an aunt. In addition, surveillance video hours before their deaths showed them calmly buying snacks at a gas station near their home.
Advocates noticed a rise in “lynchings by suicide” after the daylight strangulation death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 28, 2020. In two separate California incidents that year, Robert Fuller (May 31) and Malcolm Harsch (June 10) were found hanging from trees in Victorville and Palmdale, respectively. Despite protests from relatives and their respective communities, their deaths were officially ruled suicides.

In June of that same year in New York, Dominique Alexander, 27, was found hanging from in tree in Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park. It was ruled a suicide, over family objections.

On October 5, 2020, Nevan Baker, 22, was discovered hanging from a tree in Barker Park in Orlando, Florida. Police quickly announced there was “no evidence of foul play” and deemed the death a suicide. Baker’s family was not satisfied after photos showed injuries to his face and knotted hands, which the family argued were inconsistent with a self-inflicted hanging.

In Chicago and four days before Floyd’s murder, Trumell K. Holmes, 31, was found hung in Cook County Jail on May 21, 2020. Holmes’ death was officially ruled a hanging suicide, but his family suspected he may have been killed in custody.
Illinois State University graduate student and aspiring doctor Jelani Day, 25, was reported missing on August 25, 2021. His mutilated body was later found 10 days later floating in the Illinois River near Peru, Illinois, a sundown town. Authorities ruled his manner of death as “undetermined,” but Day’s family has suggested his death was not accidental. They continue to call for a federal probe.

On September 28, 2023, a Black woman was found hanging from a tree in a stranger’s backyard under bizarre circumstances. Orlando police ruled Yolna Lubrin’s death a suicide. Her family fiercely disputed the narrative and claimed witnesses reported hearing a woman’s scream before she was found, among other strange details.

In Colbert County, Alabama, Dennoriss “Dee” Richardson, 39, was also found hanging from a beam in a carport at an abandoned house on Sept. 28, 2024. The county sheriff concluded suicide in January, but Richardson’s family was insistent he “did not die by suicide.” Their suspicions were fueled by the fact that the father of five had filed a federal lawsuit earlier in 2023 alleging local police beat and abused him.

“This was made to look like a suicide,” Richardson’s wife Leigh Ann said at the time, saying her husband had a ‘long history of harassment’ by police.

The death of Javion “Javy” Magee, a 21-year-old, Black truck driver from Aurora, Illinois, drew national attention after his body was found on September 13, 2024, against a tree with a rope around his neck in rural North Carolina. The Vance County Sheriff’s Office quickly stated the death was not a lynching, emphasizing that because Magee was not found hanging and the rope did not have a typical noose knot, his death was inconclusive. In May 2025, the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner officially ruled Magee’s death a suicide.

Other cases involving other truck drivers, and African Americans travelling along highways or who had gone missing within the last five years only to turn up dead, shot, drowned or with ropes around their neck are numerous. Far too many to be captured in this article.
HISTORY IS A MIRROR
The horrors inflicted on Black people in the U.S. since their official arrival in the early 17th century, have been relentless and have shaped what many call the “Black experience.” In addition to murder, African Americans have had their land stolen, rights denied, homes and businesses burned, faced unjust arrest and incarceration, endured workplace harassment, had their children taken into state custody, and have been medically experimented on without permission, “This sophisticated machinery of racial terror is just a fascist strategy that relies on overwhelming force from multiple directions, including misinformation, intimidation and threats,” said Terry Wilson, founder of BLMG’s Idaho chapter. “I think we’re witnessing a coordinated campaign of disappearances, lynchings and state sanctioned killings that target Black, Brown and Indigenous communities.

“We need to address this method of ‘lynchings by suicide’ which is their way to rationalize, from a medical standpoint, their feelings,” Wilson said. “I think this is sort of a death rattle for white supremacy, because they’re relying on almost every structural institution in order to justify or cover up the actions of folks.”

On Dec. 17, 1951, human-rights activist and actor Paul Robeson, 53, delivered to the United Nations in New York the petition We Charge Genocide, documenting 152 murders and 344 violent attacks on Black Americans between 1945 and 1951. Compiled by William L. Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress, it also cited more than 10,000 lynchings in the 80 years after slavery and accused the U.S. government of violating the Article II of the Genocide Convention. Labeled communist propaganda by U.S. officials and ignored by much of the press, the petition spurred no U.N. action. Lynchings and racial violence continued long after Robeson’s death in January 1976 at the age of 77.

Among the most notorious mid-20th century incidents was the 1981 killing of Michael Donald, 19, who was kidnapped and hanged by Ku Klux Klan members in Mobile, Ala. His mother, Beulah Mae Donald, later won a civil suit against the Klan. In 1986, Michael Griffith, 23, was chased to his death by a white mob in Howard Beach, N.Y. Three years later, Yusef Hawkins, 16, was shot dead by a white crowd in Bensonhurst, N.Y., sparking mass protests. In March 1991 in Los Angeles, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot in the back of the head by a merchant who had falsely accused her of stealing. The lynching a flashpoint in the city’s racial and social tensions. Soon Ja Dum, the shopkeeper, was convicted of manslaughter but only sentenced to five years’ probation and community service. That, along with the brutal police beating of Rodney King fueled the 1992 L.A. uprising.

In Mississippi, jail hangings of Black men drew civil-rights protests for decades. In 1992, Andre Jones, 18, was found hanging in a Jackson jail; officials ruled it suicide, but his family and activists alleged foul play.

Another hate crime also shocked the nation. On June 7, 1998, in Jasper, Texas, James Byrd Jr., 49, was chained to the back of a pickup truck by white supremacists, dragged for nearly three miles and decapitated, leading to landmark federal and Texas hate-crime laws.

Yet, patterns persisted well into the 21st century. Sandra Bland, 28, a Chicago-area activist, died July 13, 2015. She was found hung in a Texas jail three days after a traffic-stop arrest. Authorities ruled suicide, though Bland was set to be released from custody the day of her death. Her family later reached a $1.9 million wrongful-death settlement.

After more than a century of activism against mob violence, Congress finally passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act in 2022, making lynching a federal hate-crime conspiracy punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Forty-eight states have their own hate-crime statutes; South Carolina and Wyoming do not.

Despite the laws, racial violence persists; a reminder, as the petitioners in 1951 argued, that the fight against racial terror is far from over.

In 2024, more than 200 bodies were discovered in unmarked graves near the Hinds County Detention Center in Jackson, Mississippi, sparked by a missing person case. Dexter Wade, 37, who was struck by a SUV and killed by an off-duty Jackson police officer while walking home, was secretly buried behind the jail by officials without his family’s knowledge.
Soon after taking his second oath of office in January 2025, President Donald Trump downsized the DOJ, eliminated FBI positions and defunded or disbanded federal civil rights enforcement units. This has left many asking what can be done to protect themselves and to receive justice when these cases occur.

Bridges said, “It doesn’t matter who kills us, they just don’t care,” he said. “They either can’t solve the case, or they claim its suicide. “To fight this, in addition to getting legal counsel, we have to unify and start believing Black people when they speak up. Arm yourselves, learn armed self-defense and whatever you do, don’t travel alone.”

Wilson had another take, “Despite all of the terrible, nasty, ugly, devilish things that are happening. I just think our people are waking up,” he said, referencing the rise of the 1791 Haitian revolution. “That’s what inspired John Brown and Harriet Tubman. We are just reliving revolution and we’re going to be the ones to take its place in this world. I’m very optimistic but cautious. We are grateful to the Black Press for continuing to tell our story. It’s going to take all of us.”
Stephanie Gadlin is an award-winning author and investigative journalist whose work blends historical analysis, data reporting, and cultural commentary. She specializes in uncovering the intersections of Black culture, public health, environmental justice, systemic racism, and economic inequality—covering stories from the United States to Africa and the Caribbean. For confidential tips, please contact: [email protected].
Subscribe to our mailing list to receives daily updates direct to your inbox!

source

About The Author