The Black community should not immediately be dismissed for speculating on the cause of a Black man’s death after he was found hanging from a tree, the author writes.
By Martin Henson
Beacon Media
A Black man was found hanging from a tree in downtown Raleigh last month.
Lynching was once so prevalent that a song bearing a description of this Southern horror, “Strange Fruit,” sold over a million records, despite being widely censored. It remains a sensitive conversation, including as part of the Raleigh man’s death that is being investigated as a suicide. Understandably, the man’s family has asked people to stop speculating, according to ABC11.
For Black men like me, familiar with long histories of racial terror imposed on Black people, it is an important discussion outside of this death’s specific circumstances.
It is on all of us to untangle and uncover where suicide ends and lynching begins.
There have been several prominent cases in the past year of Black people found dead hanging from trees. The sister of To’ Nea Miller in Florida has disputed official accounts that her sister died by suicide; friends of Jerard Jackson in Atlanta have done the same. Tasia Fortune was found hanging on August 3 in Mississippi, and a man has been charged with her murder.
A Charlotte human rights committee has asked police about the May death of Juliana Nzita, officially ruled a suicide.
The National Memorial of Peace and Justice cites 4,400 Black people killed from 1877 to 1950 by this method.
There was a reason many people were speculating about the Raleigh death. Racial Terror Lynching, as defined by the Equal Justice Initiative, is “the extrajudicial killing of one or more Black people by white mobs or entire communities with little to no accountability for the perpetrators.” Lynching is a formative piece of Black history, seared in my memory alongside Maya Angelo quotes and historic Civil Rights landmarks.
“Black people don’t hang themselves” has become the mantra for many Black people in my generation accustomed to being told lynchings are suicides. We remember.
Death certificates have named a host of other causes when Black folks have died by white mob violence. None have named lynching, but many have named suicide, using the stigma of depression to label Black people as the cause of their unfortunate death. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was the first to catalogue lynchings in 1895. That work continues. The deaths do also.
I resist conceding that these people died by suicide because of my fear that it may exonerate racial violence against Black people. I understand that death by suicide is incredibly taboo. Men account for 80% of suicide deaths. Suicide is a leading cause of death for Black people aged 15-24, and Black men have more than four times the suicide death rate of Black women.
I refuse to accept this as normal. And I am not alone in raising questions.
On September 10, U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley submitted a letter signed by 59 members of Congress to the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the increase in cases of Black people found hanging across the United States. (N.C. Rep. Alma Adams was the only congressperson from North Carolina to sign the letter.)
The letter was prompted by Julian, a Mississippi-based civil rights organization that released a report called The Crimson Record highlighting 70 modern day lynchings that have happened from 2000-2025. I count myself as an anti lynching advocate, and I extend the lynching continuum to the prominent deaths of Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin during the Black Lives Matter era.
Historical racism has shown me that there is no condition in which Black people will not be blamed for our death. What I offer as a solution is simple: Treat lynching as a plausible scenario. Lynching itself is not a conspiracy theory or mythological event. It is a well-documented act of anti-Black terrorism enacted by vigilantes and law enforcement alike.
When lynching is treated as a real phenomenon, suicide is easier to identify. Then, Black people will not have to suspect every hanging death as an act of mob violence.
In the world we live in, no coroner’s report will list lynching as a cause of death. We must not challenge the sanity of those who remember the violence waged on their ancestors — and the modern-day deaths that have raised questions.
We can meet both the reality of suicide and the terror of lynching by meeting victims with support rather than skepticism.
Martin Henson, who lives in Raleigh, is an advocate and executive director of BMEN foundation, which convenes Black men to address issues in their lives and communities. This column is syndicated by Beacon Media and is available to republish for free on all platforms under Beacon Media’s guidelines.
