'Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped'

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/08/modern-day-mississippi-lynchings/

JACKSON, Miss. — Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black men and teenagers in Mississippi, according to court records and police reports.

“The last recorded lynching in the United States was in 1981,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, a lawyer and founder of Julian, a civil rights organization named after the late civil rights leader Julian Bond. “But the thing is, lynchings never stopped in the United States. Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped. The evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.”

(snip)

During her investigation focusing intensely on Mississippi, Jefferson began seeing patterns in the deaths and connecting the dots in recent cases of Black people found hanging.

“There is a pattern to how these cases are investigated,” Jefferson said. “When authorities arrive on the scene of a hanging, it’s treated as a suicide almost immediately. The crime scene is not preserved. The investigation is shoddy. And then there is a formal ruling of suicide, despite evidence to the contrary. And the case is never heard from again unless someone brings it up.”

[electric_blue68]

1. I know; I've heard of/read about them - here, and there. Horrific, haunting...

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[thenelm1]

3. Why does this not surprise me at all. Some things never change. n/t

[cadoman]

4. I have always been shocked at how quickly cops/investigators will lock in on suicide as the answer

Wonder if it just comes down to economic motivations? Suicides don't cost any money or time, and don't ruffle the feathers of important people. We saw with Ed Buck that even well-funded departments will look the other way for a very long time as long as it's convenient.

Does anyone inside a police department have insight on what their approach/mindset is on a crime scene? Are the right incentives in place to drive them to discover the truth of a person's death?

[misanthrope]

8. Occam's Razor

The most parsimonious answer is usually the correct one an a good detective is determined to go where the evidence leads. Suicide isn't uncommon so it's always within reason.

If evidence leads to murder, then you start with folks closest to the victim since most homicides are committed by people known to the victim. Random murders are rare.

[misanthrope]

5. It's not the death by hanging that qualifies as "lynching"

But the display of the deceased in public is a key portion of it. The 1981 lynching they reference, Michael Donald, was technically murdered in hand-to-hand combat in a remote location then his body lofted on a Mobile, Alabama residential street. Other lynching victims have been burned to death, killed by gunfire, exsanguination, etc., then displayed.

Personally, I consider James Byrd to have been lynched in 1998. He was dragged to death by three white supremacists then his body dumped on the steps of a church.

[halfulglas]

6. You beat me to it.

Lynching is an act of terror. Even back when the Klansmen were on horseback or even a mob, a large portion of the victims were already dead. The display of the hanged person is to spread terror in the black population to send the message for them to know their place. The message is you might be next. Of course the photos and postcards are disgusting, but they, too sent the message.

[Demovictory9]

7. kick

[uponit7771]

9. "...it's treated as a suicide almost immediately..."

[raccoon]

10. Excellent article, but what about the other 49 states?

If you think this isn’t happening in other states, or if you think it’s limited to the states that used to be in the Confederate States of America, you are mistaken.

[Elessar Zappa]

11. Lynching cases have always

been much higher in the Deep South. Lynchings may occur in other places but it was not near as common as in the former confederacy.

[raccoon]

12. There were plenty of murders and mass murders of ethnic

Groups in other areas. They might not have called it lynching. But hate crimes happen everywhere.


Look up Vincent Chin. His two murderers served no jail time. That was in Michigan.