According to various civil rights and justice advocacy groups and media reports, an alarming number of Black people found hanged has been reported throughout the United States over the past year.
Rapid investigations, a lack of transparency and disputes over conclusions ruling the deaths suicide is at best insensitive to America’s history of racial terrorism and at worst a return to the pre-civil rights era of lynching, activists claim.
At Final Call presstime, at least 16 people of various ages, male and female, were found hanged and whose deaths were ruled suicide or to date remain under investigation, Black Lives Matter Georgia said on their website.
The group noted that between “March 2025 to August 2026, at least 25 Black people have died across the United States under circumstances their families, communities, and civil rights organizations consider suspicious, insufficiently investigated, or prematurely classified.”
Regarding the 16 hanging deaths, Black Lives Matter Georgia said the latest included an unidentified man whose body was discovered hung in a wooded area along Goose Creek Trail at the Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Kentucky, August 29.
“The investigation is ongoing—one week after Demetrius Fleming was found hanging in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and two weeks after a Black man was found hanging in downtown Raleigh,” their statement said.
Among the grievances listed by family members seeking answers, the advocacy group said a pattern of “rapid suicide rulings” where cases are quickly closed—“often before autopsies are completed, before camera footage is reviewed and before families are notified,” is a point of contention leaving more questions than answers.
Black Lives Matter Georgia said the hangings and other questionable deaths, have occurred in at least 18 states and that “Black people found hanging from trees in public spaces across the American South and beyond—echoing a history this country has never fully confronted,” must be investigated to the fullest extent of the law.
Say their names
Some of the cases that have been reported include:
• Charlotte, North Carolina – Mario Kaiser Jr., a 30-year-old trucking business owner, was found dead approximately 50 feet from his apartment complex with a noose around his neck, hanging from a tree on April 29, 2025. Death ruled suicide.
• Albany, New York – Earl D. Smith, a 58-year-old husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, was found hanging from a tree in a public area of downtown Albany on June 11, 2025. Death ruled suicide.
• Oakland, California – Unidentified man, a 36-year-old Black man was found unresponsive hanging from a tree just off the Bridgeview Trail in Dimond Canyon on June 30, 2025. Death ruled suicide.
• Cleveland, Mississippi – Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old computer science major and first-generation college student from Grenada, Mississippi, was found hanging from a tree near the pickleball courts on the Delta State University campus on September 15, 2025. Death ruled suicide.
• Albuquerque, New Mexico – Jayvon Givan, a 29-year-old from Kansas City, was found hanging by a metal chain from a stucco pillar outside a vacant business closed for renovations on September 17, 2024. He had left Kansas City to backpack across America. His body was cremated before his family knew he was dead. Death ruled suicide.
• Brookfield, Wisconsin – Tory Medley, a 39-year-old Black man from Milwaukee, was found hanging from a tree at Brookfield Hills Golf Course on November 13, 2025. He was hanging by a strap around his neck attached to a tree branch. Death ruled suicide.
• Marietta, Georgia – Kyle Bassinga, a 21-year-old Georgia State University student, was reported missing on February 14 (Valentine’s Day). Four days later, on February 18, a 911 caller reported a dead person in the same wooded area. Death ruled suicide.
• Charlotte, North Carolina – Juliana Umba Nzita, a 16-year-old originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, was reported missing on April 28, 2026. On May 8, a community volunteer found her body hanging from a tree on church property on West Sugar Creek Road. Death ruled suicide.
• Harrisburg, North Carolina – Cedric Longanga Tayuhe, a 36-year-old Black man originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, was found dead at Harris Depot Park in Harrisburg, North Carolina. Death under investigation.
• Miami, Florida – Tonea Nicole Miller, a 27-year-old Black woman from Flint, Michigan, was found hanging from a tree in Gwen Cherry Park in the Gladeview neighborhood of Miami-Dade County on June 18, 2026. Death ruled suicide.
• Albany, Georgia – Justice Kai James, 29, was found hanging outside the cafeteria of the Turner Job Corps Center in Albany, Georgia, on June 21, 2026. Death under investigation.
• Rothbury, Michigan – Jerard “Jay” Jackson, a 28-year-old Black man from Illinois who drove friends to the Electric Forest music festival in Rothbury, Michigan, was reported missing on June 29, 2026. Hours before he vanished, he had called state troopers to report an alleged incident involving a friend—investigators concluded the incident had not occurred. Death ruled suicide.
• Greenville, Mississippi – Robert Elliot, a 37-year-old Black man whose body was found burned and wrapped in a tarp in Greenville, on July 21. According to media reports, in Leland, Miss., less than 10 miles from Greenville, listed his death date as July 19, two days before his body was found. More than a month passed between the discovery of his body and the police’s statement publicly identifying him. Death under investigation.
• Jackson, Mississippi – Tasia Fortune, a Black, 29-year-old mother of four, was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in the 500 block of Road of Remembrance, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 3, 2026. Neighbors discovered her body and called police. Death under investigation.
• Raleigh, North Carolina – The body of an unidentified Black man was found hanging from a tree in a back parking lot near downtown Raleigh on August 15, 2026. Death ruled suicide.
• Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina – Demetrius Eugene Fleming, a 38-year-old Black man, was found deceased and connected to a ligature in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, on August 22, 2026. Death under investigation.
• Louisville, Kentucky – Unidentified man, on the evening of August 29, 2026, Louisville law enforcement responded to E.P. Tom Sawyer State Park after receiving a report at approximately 6:59 PM of a man found hanging in a wooded area near the Goose Creek Trail. Death under investigation.
Calls for action
Shena Medley is the oldest sibling of Tory Medley, whose body was found hanging from a tree near a golf course in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, Wisconsin, November 13, 2025. (See The Final Call Vol. 45 No. 13). She told The Final Call that short of a confession or witnesses, little can be done to challenge the official narrative of suicide—although for her, many facts surrounding her brother’s death still do not add up.
“There’s evidence they could have pursued, like trying to find (his) cell phone or pinging the cell phone tower,” she said. Ms. Medley said there was a rideshare driver, “who swears she dropped him off near the hotel, and they (police) said according to the Flock camera, she was nowhere nearby.”
“His phone had to be somewhere,” she recalled, noting that to date her brother’s phone remains missing. Ms. Medley also said the ratchet strap, from which his body hanged, was never tested for forensic evidence and that his backpack was supposedly found in a mall parking lot over a mile away.
Longtime Mississippi community activist Marquell Bridges told The Final Call that too many hangings are quickly ruled suicide-related, often with little investigation or adequate forensic analysis.
“Every single family says the same thing,” Mr. Bridges said. “They definitely understand and know that suicide, depression and all of these things are real, but all of them say the same thing, that ‘Black people don’t hang themselves from trees.’ Their loved one would never have done it that way, done it period,” he argued.
National groups are also raising questions about these cases.
“The NAACP Legal Defense Fund Inc. (‘LDF’) writes with grave concern about a series of deaths of Black individuals across the country under suspicious and questionable circumstances over the past decade or more,” LDF said in a written petition to Congress on August 24.
“Equally concerning is the apparent indifference of state and local authorities, as well as the federal government, to investigate the causes of these deaths.
LDF, therefore, urgently requests that Congress take immediate action by creating a congressional commission to conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation into these deaths,” their letter to the leadership of both the House and Senate said in part.
In a second letter, submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the LDF appealed to the UN to bring international attention to the plight of Black people in the United States through a human rights perspective.
“In a new report, the nonprofit JULIAN identifies 70 cases, between 2000 and 2025, of what is described as ‘modern-day lynchings.’ These deaths occurred in Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama—parts of the country that have a tragic legacy of racially-charged lynchings,” the LDF letter said in part.
JULIAN is a civil rights organization started by attorney Jill Collen Jefferson in 2020 that investigates suspected modern-day lynchings and suspicious deaths of Black people in the U.S.
