By Stephanie Gadlin
Crusader Replace: Based on activists working with the household of Trey Reed, a second, unbiased post-mortem revealed the Delta State College pupil had blunt drive trauma to the again of the pinnacle presumably indicating a murder, in direct battle of the preliminary suicide ruling. This story is growing.
As soon as carried out within the open by bestial White mobs, activists say lynching of Black Individuals has been rebranded in fashionable America as rulings of suicide, leaving households to query official rulings in a mounting variety of suspicious deaths.
This previous weekend, 21-year-old Delta State College (DSU) pupil Demartravion “Trey” Reed, who was discovered hanging from a tree on campus on Sept. 15, was memorialized as an excellent pupil, accountable son, and an individual who was each outgoing and well liked by lecturers, classmates and pals.
Cleveland, Miss., the place DSU is situated, is a small metropolis in Bolivar County, within the Delta area. It sits alongside U.S. Freeway 61, about 120 miles south of Memphis, 110 miles northwest of the state capital and simply 35 miles from the place Emmett Until was lynched 70 years in the past. The state has an extended and storied historical past of racial violence towards African Individuals.
DSU, based in 1925, is a predominantly White establishment, initially established as a Whites-only trainer’s faculty. The primary Black college students enrolled in fall 1967 to sturdy opposition and racial backlash. The college has an endowment of roughly $38 million (per 2021 figures); and undergraduate tuition is about $8,435 yearly earlier than room, board and different charges.
Trey, the primary in his household to go to varsity, had solely been on campus for about 30 days. After Reed’s loss of life drew native to nationwide considerations of one other lynching, college officers and the county coroner shortly said there was no proof of foul play even earlier than post-mortem outcomes or a police investigation had been accomplished, in keeping with activists. Inside hours of notifying the scholar’s household, his loss of life had been dominated as suicide. An post-mortem later confirmed the choice.
The Cleveland Police Division introduced in an announcement that the “findings had been according to the division’s preliminary investigation.”
Credit score: Photograph courtesy of Marquell Bridges
The Crusader reached out to DSU for remark and acquired no response. The varsity’s President Daniel Ennis stated throughout a Sept. 17 press convention, “Our group is deeply saddened by this loss. We prolong our heartfelt condolences to the households and pals of all these impacted by Trey’s loss. The preliminary report from the Bolivar County Coroner’s Workplace signifies no proof of foul play.”
What would make a pupil, who pals declare was each upbeat, pleasant and exhibited no indicators of melancholy instantly take his personal life? The primary narrative claimed Reed walked out of a dorm on Sunday night time and for unknown causes climbed a tree and hung himself earlier than his physique was discovered at 7 a.m. the following morning.
Nevertheless, activists the Crusader spoke with shared a unique narrative that they are saying increase appreciable doubt that Reed lynched himself. Based on Andrew Joseph, discipline coordinator for Black Lives Matter Grassroots (BLMG) speedy response staff, the freshman, wearing a hoodie, jogging pants and Crocs, had simply completed finishing a paper due the next morning in his dorm room, allegedly in keeping with a roommate. After submitting his paper, simply earlier than its deadline, the scholar left to see his girlfriend in one other dormitory between 9 and 10 p.m.
BLMG shouldn’t be confused with the nationwide Black Lives Matter community that acquired over $300 million in donations that prime leaders had been accused of utilizing for luxurious properties and different perks. The native group, with chapters energetic for years earlier than “Black Lives Matter” grew to become a social-media slogan, was later “co-opted by extremely paid consultants who pilfered the individuals’s purse and stole from organizers and households,” an organizer stated.
The group says it by no means expenses households for help. Members have been in Mississippi serving to the Reed household, together with interviewing reluctant witnesses who mistrust regulation enforcement.
“We came upon (Trey) bought a telephone name and that was why he’s seen (on digital camera) pacing in entrance of the constructing,” Joseph stated, acknowledging data and ideas had been nonetheless coming in. “We don’t know who he was speaking to. That’s the final time anyone heard from him. He was discovered the following morning partially hanging in a tree from a belt that was thrice his measurement. Trey was brief and had a slight body, and his roommate stated he didn’t go away with a belt. He was carrying jogging pants with a drawstring waist, a hoodie, a doo-rag and Crocs. Opposite to loads of stuff in social media, he didn’t have damaged bones and hadn’t been overwhelmed up.
“He was discovered close to the pickleball courtroom which is situated close to the spot the place the White youngsters hand around in their jeeps and pickup vans consuming, smoking and taking part in music all night time,” Joseph continued. “It’s well-known on the campus that that was the one spot that didn’t have cameras. It’s a lie that his loss of life is on digital camera. That spot was additionally close to the place the place a Charlie Kirk memorial was erected.”
Kirk, a well-liked conservative activist, was gunned down on Sept. 10, whereas chatting with college students at Utah Valley College.
“I really feel the campus is barely involved about its public picture,” Joseph stated. “Not solely did they misinform Trey’s mom and inform her he had died in his dorm room, however additionally they carried on with that weekend’s soccer sport as if nothing occurred. (DSU) doesn’t need the stain of a lynching as a result of that can affect enrollment, fundraising and the varsity’s fame.”
The Crusader tried to achieve the Reed household earlier than the submitting of this report however was informed they “didn’t have media coaching,” and weren’t accessible. Nevertheless, Jeremy McQuell Bridges, founding father of the Constructing Bridges Coalition, a Mississippi-based group composed of civil rights organizations, new Black Panther and self-defense teams, community-based organizations and church buildings, spoke on their behalf. He stated he has been on the DSU campus investigating the case and clarifying conflicting studies.
Credit score: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, The Frederick Douglass Papers on the Library of Congress
Neither “the proof nor the information help the ruling of suicide,” Bridges stated. “He was discovered solely partially hanging, and the medical expert couldn’t decide the time of loss of life. There weren’t any bruises or ligatures round his neck that will point out he had been strangled or had been dangling by a rope for a number of hours. It seems to us he was manually choked someplace else after which his physique was put in that tree.”
He additionally informed the Crusader, Reed had “gotten into it with White males” days earlier than his loss of life. “We’ve copies of textual content messages and different data that proves (Trey) had an altercation with some White boys on campus,” he stated. “The screenshot reveals us that he was in battle a day or two earlier than he died and that it began on-line.
“Trey got here to the protection of a younger sister who was being attacked for feedback she made about Charlie Kirk. He was defending her and began arguing forwards and backwards with 4 White guys. Two are college students on the DSU campus—and we all know who they’re. We’re nonetheless investigating this to see if there’s a connection,” Bridges stated.
Activists additionally allege Reed’s cellphone was absent from his returned possessions, however “the GPS tracker was nonetheless energetic, and his mom noticed the machine shifting all through the county,” Joseph added. “If his cellphone is meant to be in proof, why is it shifting from location to location?”
Bridges additionally alleged the household was informed Reed despatched two texts earlier than his loss of life together with one which learn, “the buckle broke.” Nevertheless, “neither printout had a timestamp or date” and “the massive belt discovered round his neck was lacking a buckle. It wasn’t on the bottom and police haven’t situated it wherever.
“Are we presupposed to imagine he hung himself, threw away the buckle after which despatched a textual content? We all know from historical past that lynch mobs like to maintain souvenirs from their crimes,” Bridges stated.
The household is represented by famed private harm lawyer Benjamin Crump, who spoke at Reed’s funeral. Outcomes of a second post-mortem, reportedly paid for by former NFL star Colin Kaepernick, are pending.
Reed’s case wasn’t the one suspicious loss of life of an African American days after the Kirk assassination. In Houston, the our bodies of six African Individuals had been recovered from Houston waterways between Sept. 15 by way of Sept. 20. Just one has been publicly recognized – Jade “Sage” McKissic, 20, a College of Houston junior reported lacking Sept. 11 and located 4 days later in Brays Bayou. Authorities stated her post-mortem confirmed no indicators of foul play and that the deaths usually are not linked. The opposite 5 individuals stay unidentified.
Although it’s uncommon to discover a half dozen our bodies discovered deceased in an analogous method, in a five-day interval, Houston officers stated there’s “no proof of a serial killer” and causes of loss of life are pending with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. On-line hypothesis in regards to the Texas case contains the likelihood of lynching.
The brand new Pink File
It has been 130 years since Ida B. Wells printed “The Pink File,” a manifesto recording 537 lynching deaths in a one-year interval between 1893 and 1894 and greater than 10,000 accomplished or tried crimes because the finish of slavery. Most had been concentrated in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, however Black individuals in northern cities fared no higher.
Based on Congress, lynching “is a federal hate-crime offense: when two or extra individuals conspire to commit a hate-crime below 18 U.S.C. § 249 and loss of life or severe bodily harm outcomes (or the offense contains kidnapping, tried kidnapping, tried killing, or aggravated sexual abuse)” with a penalty of as much as 30 years in jail.
In different phrases, lynchings are mob violence outdoors the courts, traditionally used to implement White supremacy, punish and intimidate African Individuals. Strategies embrace hangings, shootings, beatings, stabbings, burnings, torture, drownings and sexual assaults leading to loss of life or grievous harm. They typically embrace mutilations, castrations, and pre- and post- communal occasions and family-centric celebration of the crimes.
Within the 1955 case of Emmett Until, the Chicago eighth grader who was kidnapped and murdered whereas visiting Mississippi kin whereas on summer time trip, he was overwhelmed, tortured, stabbed and shot earlier than his White, grownup male killers tossed his small physique, tied to a cotton-gin fan, into the Tallahatchie River.
Hate crimes have risen sharply all through the U.S. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) logged 7,314 incidents in 2019 and 11,679 in 2024, the best on document, in keeping with the Division of Justice. In 2023, anti-Black or African American focused incidents made up 51.3 p.c of race/ethnicity motivated hate crimes — greater than thrice increased than the following racial/ethnic class.
In immediately’s tense racial, financial and political local weather, are lynchings on the rise? Regardless of the rebrand, current incidents counsel patterns are rising.
On March 8, 2025, Qaadir Malik Lewis and Naazir Rahim Lewis, 19-year-old twins from Lawrenceville, Ga., had been discovered useless with gunshot wounds on the summit of Bell Mountain in Cities County, Ga. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation first described the case as a murder-suicide, however then on Might 21, 2025, dominated it a double suicide.
Relations dispute the ruling and level out uncommon circumstances. The Lewis twins had been en route to go to household, had airline reservations, unused tickets nonetheless of their wallets and had “by no means been to Bell Mountain,” in keeping with an aunt. As well as, surveillance video hours earlier than their deaths confirmed them calmly shopping for snacks at a gasoline station close to their house.
Advocates observed an increase in “lynchings by suicide” after the daylight strangulation loss of life of George Floyd by the hands of Minneapolis cops on Might 28, 2020. In two separate California incidents that yr, Robert Fuller (Might 31) and Malcolm Harsch (June 10) had been discovered hanging from bushes in Victorville and Palmdale, respectively. Regardless of protests from kin and their respective communities, their deaths had been formally dominated suicides.
In June of that very same yr in New York, Dominique Alexander, 27, was discovered hanging from a tree in Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park. It was dominated a suicide, over household objections.
On Oct. 5, 2020, Nevan Baker, 22, was found hanging from a tree in Barker Park in Orlando, Fla. Police shortly introduced there was “no proof of foul play” and deemed the loss of life a suicide. Baker’s household was not glad after images confirmed accidents to his face and knotted arms, which the household argued had been inconsistent with a self-inflicted hanging.
In Chicago and 4 days earlier than Floyd’s homicide, Trumell Okay. Holmes, 31, was discovered hanged in Prepare dinner County Jail on Might 21, 2020. Holmes’ loss of life was formally dominated a dangling suicide, however his household suspected he might have been killed in custody.
Illinois State College graduate pupil and aspiring physician Jelani Day, 25, was reported lacking on Aug. 25, 2021. His mutilated physique was later discovered 10 days later floating within the Illinois River close to Peru, Sick., a sunset city. Authorities dominated his method of loss of life as “undetermined,” however Day’s household has instructed his loss of life was not unintended. They proceed to name for a federal probe.
On Sept. 28, 2023, a Black girl was discovered hanging from a tree in a stranger’s yard below weird circumstances. Orlando police dominated Yolna Lubrin’s loss of life a suicide. Her household fiercely disputed the narrative and claimed witnesses reported listening to a lady’s scream earlier than she was discovered, amongst different unusual particulars.
In Colbert County, Ala., Dennoriss “Dee” Richardson, 39, was additionally discovered hanging from a beam in a carport at an deserted home on Sept. 28, 2024. The county sheriff concluded suicide in January, however Richardson’s household was insistent he “didn’t die by suicide.” Their suspicions had been fueled by the truth that the daddy of 5 had filed a federal lawsuit earlier in 2023 alleging native police beat and abused him.
“This was made to appear to be a suicide,” Richardson’s spouse Leigh Ann stated on the time, saying her husband had a “lengthy historical past of harassment” by police.
The loss of life of Javion “Javy” Magee, a 21-year-old, Black truck driver from Aurora, Sick., drew nationwide consideration after his physique was discovered on Sept. 13, 2024, towards a tree with a rope round his neck in rural North Carolina. The Vance County Sheriff’s Workplace shortly said the loss of life was not a lynching, emphasizing that as a result of Magee was not discovered hanging and the rope didn’t have a typical noose knot, his loss of life was inconclusive. In Might 2025, the North Carolina Workplace of the Chief Medical Examiner formally dominated Magee’s loss of life a suicide.
Different instances involving different truck drivers, and African Individuals travelling alongside highways or who had gone lacking inside the final 5 years solely to show up useless, shot, drowned or with ropes round their neck are quite a few. Far too many to be captured on this article.
Historical past is a mirror
The horrors inflicted on Black individuals within the U.S. since their official arrival within the early seventeenth century have been relentless and have formed what many name the “Black expertise.” Along with homicide, African Individuals have had their land stolen, rights denied, properties and companies burned, confronted unjust arrest and incarceration, endured office harassment, had their youngsters taken into state custody, and have been medically experimented on with out permission.
“This refined equipment of racial terror is only a fascist technique that depends on overwhelming drive from a number of instructions, together with misinformation, intimidation and threats,” stated Terry Wilson, founding father of BLMG’s Idaho chapter. “I believe we’re witnessing a coordinated marketing campaign of disappearances, lynchings and state sanctioned killings that concentrate on Black, Brown and Indigenous communities.
“We have to handle this methodology of ‘lynchings by suicide’ which is their solution to rationalize, from a medical standpoint, their emotions,” Wilson stated. “I believe that is kind of a loss of life rattle for White supremacy, as a result of they’re counting on nearly each structural establishment in an effort to justify or cowl up the actions of oldsters.”
On Dec. 17, 1951, human-rights activist and actor Paul Robeson, 53, delivered to the United Nations in New York the petition We Cost Genocide, documenting 152 murders and 344 violent assaults on Black Individuals between 1945 and 1951. Compiled by William L. Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress, it additionally cited greater than 10,000 lynchings within the 80 years after slavery and accused the U.S. authorities of violating the Article II of the Genocide Conference. Labeled communist propaganda by U.S. officers and ignored by a lot of the press, the petition spurred no U.N. motion. Lynchings and racial violence continued lengthy after Robeson’s loss of life in January 1976 on the age of 77.
Among the many most infamous mid-Twentieth century incidents was the 1981 killing of Michael Donald, 19, who was kidnapped and hanged by Ku Klux Klan members in Cell, Ala. His mom, Beulah Mae Donald, later received a civil swimsuit towards the Klan. In 1986, Michael Griffith, 23, was chased to his loss of life by a White mob in Howard Seaside, N.Y. Three years later, Yusef Hawkins, 16, was shot useless by a White crowd in Bensonhurst, N.Y., sparking mass protests. In March 1991 in Los Angeles, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot behind the pinnacle by a service provider who had falsely accused her of stealing. The lynching grew to become a flashpoint within the metropolis’s racial and social tensions. Quickly Ja Dum, the shopkeeper, was convicted of manslaughter however solely sentenced to 5 years’ probation and group service. That, together with the brutal police beating of Rodney King fueled the 1992 L.A. rebellion.
In Mississippi, jail hangings of Black males drew civil-rights protests for many years. In 1992, Andre Jones, 18, was discovered hanging in a Jackson jail. Officers dominated it suicide, however his household and activists alleged foul play.
One other hate crime additionally shocked the nation. On June 7, 1998, in Jasper, Texas, James Byrd Jr., 49, was chained to the again of a pickup truck by White supremacists, dragged for practically 3 miles and decapitated, resulting in landmark federal and Texas hate-crime legal guidelines.
But, patterns continued properly into the twenty first century. Sandra Bland, 28, a Chicago-area activist, died July 13, 2015. She was discovered hanged in a Texas jail three days after a traffic-stop arrest. Authorities dominated suicide, although Bland was set to be launched from custody the day of her loss of life. Her household later reached a $1.9 million wrongful-death settlement.
After greater than a century of activism towards mob violence, Congress lastly handed the Emmett Until Antilynching Act in 2022, making lynching a federal hate-crime conspiracy punishable by as much as 30 years in jail. Forty-eight states have their very own hate-crime statutes; South Carolina and Wyoming don’t.
Regardless of the legal guidelines, racial violence persists; a reminder, because the petitioners in 1951 argued, that the combat towards racial terror is much from over.
In 2024, greater than 200 our bodies had been found in unmarked graves close to the Hinds County Detention Middle in Jackson, Miss., sparked by a lacking individual case. Dexter Wade, 37, who was struck and killed whereas strolling house by an SUV pushed by an off-duty Jackson police officer, was secretly buried behind the jail by officers with out his household’s information.
Quickly after taking his second oath of workplace in January 2025, President Donald Trump downsized the DOJ, eradicated FBI positions and defunded or disbanded federal civil rights enforcement items. This has left many asking what might be executed to guard themselves and to obtain justice when these instances happen.
“It doesn’t matter who kills us, they simply don’t care,” Bridges stated. “They both can’t remedy the case, or they declare its suicide. To combat this, along with getting authorized counsel, now we have to unify and begin believing Black individuals after they communicate up. Arm yourselves, study armed self-defense and no matter you do, don’t journey alone.”
Wilson had one other take. “Regardless of the entire horrible, nasty, ugly, devilish issues which might be occurring. I simply suppose our persons are waking up,” he stated, referencing the rise of the 1791 Haitian revolution. “That’s what impressed John Brown and Harriet Tubman. We’re simply reliving revolution and we’re going to be those to take its place on this world. I’m very optimistic however cautious. We’re grateful to the Black Press for persevering with to inform our story. It’s going to take all of us.”This text was initially printed by The Chicago Defender.
