Tasia Fortune was 29 years old, a mother of four, when police found her body hanging from a tree behind a vacant house in Jackson, Mississippi.
The place had a haunting name: the 500 block of Road of Remembrance.
For Black Americans, memories surface quickly when a Black person is found hanging from a tree.
Old, grainy photos show Black men surrounded by smiling crowds. The ropes. The trees. Bodies left on display. Postcards are made from these horrors. Thousands of names, some remembered and many forgotten, from a time when lynching was not just a way to kill Black people but a way to terrorize everyone who survived.
Now there are new names.
Javion Magee; Dennoriss Richardson; Earl Smith; Demartravion “Trey” Reed; Kyle Basalinga; Juliana Nzita; To’Nea Nicole Miller; and Jerard Jackson.
Their faces now appear together in a single image widely shared on social media, with each photo accompanied by the words “FOUND HANGING FROM TREES.” This week, Academy Award-winning actor Viola Davis shared the image with three angry, red-faced emojis. Over 122,000 people liked her post.
One person responding beneath it reached back to the controversial 2013 death of Georgia teenager Kendrick Johnson.
“Kendrick Johnson didn’t roll himself up into that gym mat either,” the commenter wrote. “People aren’t angry enough about all of this.”
The anger is real, and some argue the need for caution is, too.
No evidence connects these deaths. Authorities have ruled some as suicides and said they found no signs of foul play in others. Some details shared on social media, like ages and circumstances, do not match published reports. Suspicion alone cannot turn a suicide into a murder, and America’s painful history cannot by itself explain what happened in each case.
Still, history and the questions families ask do not go away just because an official report says “suicide.”
“Lynchings are not just a relic of the past; they continue to scar society today,” said Marcus Reynolds, a 34-year-old civil rights activist. “These acts of violence are reminders that hatred still festers beneath the surface, and justice remains a distant hope for many communities.”
Eight faces, eight deaths
Magee, an 18-year-old truck driver from the Chicago area, was found dead under a tree in Henderson, North Carolina, in September 2024. A rope was around his neck, with the other end attached to a tree. Authorities said there were no signs of foul play. His family demanded a more complete accounting of how he died.
That same month, Richardson, 28, was found hanging in an abandoned house in Colbert County, Alabama. Authorities ruled his death a suicide, but his family challenged that finding.
Smith, 58, was found hanging from a tree near Green and South streets in Albany, New York, in June. Authorities determined that Smith’s death was a suicide.
A freshman at Delta State University in Mississippi, Reed, 21, was found hanging from a tree on campus in September 2025.
His death was ruled a suicide.
Reed’s family later confirmed that his girlfriend said he sent suicidal text messages the night before his body was discovered, according to published reports. Claims circulated online that an independent autopsy found head trauma, but that report has not been publicly released for independent review.
Basalinga, 21, was found hanging from a tree in Cobb County, Georgia, in March. Police said investigators found no evidence of foul play.
Then came Nzita in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Nzita was found hanging from a tree on church property in May. Published accounts described circumstances that alarmed her family: her feet reportedly touched the ground, a small chair was nearby, and a ratchet strap encircled her neck and the tree.
Authorities determined that she died by suicide and closed the investigation within days, but her family questioned that conclusion.
On June 18, Miller of Flint, Michigan, was found dead at Gwen Cherry Park in Miami. Claims that Miller had been lynched spread across social media.
Miami-Dade authorities said the evidence was consistent with suicide and that investigators found no evidence of foul play.
Even within Miller’s family, there was disagreement. Her sister publicly rejected the suicide explanation, while an aunt said she accepted it after speaking with investigators and the medical examiner.
On June 30, Jerard Jackson was found hanging from a tree in Rothbury, Michigan.
Each death has its own evidence, witnesses, forensic details, and unanswered questions, and civil rights advocates say every family deserves answers grounded in those facts.
“When we talk about lynching today, we must recognize it in all its modern forms, racially motivated murders, hate crimes, and systemic violence that target marginalized groups,” said Angela Farhnam, a 47-year-old historian. “Understanding this is crucial to breaking cycles of oppression.”
Then another mother got a telephone call.
Fortune was found on Aug. 3 behind the vacant Jackson house. Her body was identified three days later. An autopsy was performed on Aug. 12. Authorities have not publicly announced a final cause and manner of death, and Jackson police have said the investigation remains open.
Her mother has already made her position unmistakable.
“She did not do this to herself,” Christy Spivey told ABC News.
Trauma that Stretches from Mississippi Across the Country
For Mississippi, these questions come on ground marked by a violent history. Years after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy visiting Mississippi from Chicago, was abducted, tortured, and murdered after being accused of offending a white woman.
His killers were acquitted, but the photo of Till’s mutilated body became a defining image of the civil rights movement because his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, made sure America saw what happened to her son.
Seventy years later, another Black mother in Mississippi is refusing to quietly accept an explanation she believes does not fit her child’s death.
Civil rights attorney Jill Collen Jefferson has been looking beyond individual cases. Her organization, JULIAN, released “A Crimson Record: Seven State Modern-Day Lynching Report 2000-2025” in February. The organization says it documented more than 70 deaths it considers suspected modern-day lynchings across Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama, including 20 in Mississippi.
President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act in 2022, making lynching a specific federal hate crime, more than a century after the first federal anti-lynching legislation was introduced.
“The trauma caused by lynchings stretches across generations,” said David Kim, a 29-year-old social worker. “It’s not just an isolated event; it creates fear, fractures communities, and demands that we confront uncomfortable truths about safety and equality in our society.”
Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., urged restraint after Fortune’s death while acknowledging exactly why that restraint is difficult.
“We also cannot dismiss the fear and painful history these circumstances evoke for Black communities, especially in Mississippi,” King said. “That history makes transparency, thoroughness, and truth essential.”
This may be where these deaths connect—not in proof that lynch mobs have returned, but in the distrust and in families asking investigators to be transparent.
And they gather behind a vacant house on Road of Remembrance, where Tasia Fortune’s four children lost their mother and Christy Spivey lost her daughter.
The investigation must determine how Fortune died, while her mother waits.
“I know my daughter,” Spivey said, “and she did not do this to herself.”
