It’s been more than a week since the parents of Nolan Xavier Wells, a Black teenager eager to make his mark as a wide receiver on the football team at Southwest Mississippi Community College, received the call that no family ever wants to get.
After leaving home to celebrate the Fourth of July with friends on Horn Island — an uninhabited stretch of wilderness nestled among barrier islands located off the Mississippi coast — the teen’s parents became alarmed after their son failed to respond to calls, and his whereabouts were unknown.
Two days later, the foreboding sense of fear that had undoubtedly haunted Wells’ parents since his disappearance was confirmed: his body had been found by a U.S. Park Service Ranger, face down in the water just off the island’s northwest tip.
The 18-year-old’s friends made it safely back to the mainland. He did not.
Now, Wells’ parents, Elmore and Christine Wonsley, must wait anxiously, hoping to learn what really happened to their son, and prayerfully find some semblance of peace.
Meanwhile, questions continue to mount. Why didn’t the youth return with his friends? Why didn’t he have his cellphone with him? Was he involved in an altercation? Did he remain behind to meet with a girl or someone else?
Further, why did the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office state that no foul play was suspected, even before official autopsy and toxicology reports had been completed?
Mississippi is known for its beauty: magnificent magnolias, lush bayous, cypress swamps, and moss-draped Southern live oak. But the Magnolia State also bears the ignoble distinction of the highest number of lynchings recorded in America, with an estimated 581 documented victims between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
As part of the rite of passage for their children as they reach adulthood, Black parents often recount the tragic narrative of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a Black teenager from Chicago, who, after allegedly whistling at a White woman, was abducted, tortured, and killed on Aug. 28, 1955, in the Mississippi Delta while visiting his relatives.
Mississippi is where three civil rights activists, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were arrested by local police in Neshoba County on June 21, 1964, and later released into the hands of a Ku Klux Klan mob who severely beat Chaney, a 21-year-old Black man, before shooting and killing him and his two White colleagues.
During a news conference on July 10, the Rev. Al Sharpton said while he was reluctant to rush to judgment or speculate that racism may have led to Wells’ death, he admitted, “This does not smell right.”
The truth will eventually come to light, but since the days well before the Civil War, Mississippi has been a dangerous and deadly place for African Americans.
It seems the South is still the South.
