Perspective: Police say deaths of black people by hanging are suicides. Many black people aren’t so sure. Even the official cause of these deaths echoes the history of the lynching era.
, who were found hanging from trees in Southern California within 10 days and 50 miles of each other, are also denying police claims that the deaths were suicides. “The numerous accounts of a deceased black man found hanging in a tree are a horrific reminder of our country’s history. We are in a moment with parallels to the era of lynching that should cause us great suspicion of any rush to label the cases as suicide,” says Thomas Foster, author ofand a professor of history at Howard University.
During the lynching era, it was not uncommon for the deaths of black men to be ruled as suicides to cover up murders by white mobs and police officers. The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, based at Northeastern University, has been compiling a database of lynchings and other forms of anti-black murder. Jay Driskell, a consulting historian for the project, says the trend of declaring black lynchings to be suicides stretches back to the 1930s.
“One of the first ways that lynchers and police who murdered blacks got exonerated was through the coroner,” Driskell says. Back then, coroners did not have to have medical training. “Once in a while, they would use suicide as a way to not do their job, to cover up for police officers they knew or community members they wanted to protect from prosecution.”went missing from his barracks at Fort Benning, Ga. On March 28, 1941, his body was found hanging over a ravine in the woods on the base.
In perhaps the most bizarre case, Shadrack Thompson was found hanging on Sept. 15, 1932, in Linden, Va., after being accused of attacking a white farmer and his wife. Thompson vanished, and his body was found two months later. He was burned; dismembered body parts had been distributed to members of the community as celebratory souvenirs, and his head was put on display 25 miles away, in Warrenton. The official verdict on Thompson’s death was suicide.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” says civil rights activist and theologian Ruby Sales, who ticks off the names of other recent cases authorities ruled to be suicides that she has investigated since 2008:
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