Hanging Death in the Dirty South: Suicide or Lynching?

Residents in and around Denver, Colorado received an update on latest information relating to the hanging death of Frederick Jermaine Carter in the Dec. 30, 2010 Denver Weekly News, the state’s only weekly Black news publication. The text of the article is below or Click here to view the PDF copy of the printed article.

(CORRECTION NOTE: In the published DWN article, the photo caption reads that Min. Louis Farrakhan, Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP and other groups are calling for a FEDERAL investigation of the hanging. It should read that all mentioned are calling for FURTHER investigation. Only Mr. Jealous has gone on record as calling for federal intervention.)

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Hanging Death in the Dirty South: Suicide or Lynching?

New Year for some is a flashback to the 1800s

By Adeeba Folami

With 2011 right around the corner and a Black president in the White House, visions of a “post-racial America” may still be alive in many minds but not for a growing number of Blacks who remain outraged over the death of Frederick Jermaine Carter, 26, whose dead body was found hanging from a tree Dec. 3 near Greenwood, Mississippi. Suspended with a noose around his neck in Leflore, the same county where 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, supposedly for disrespecting a White woman. History records that more than 500 Blacks were lynched in Mississippi from 1800 to 1955; and more than 5000 nationwide suffered the tortuous death by hanging, often at the hands of White lynch mobs.

Initial autopsy findings ruled Carter’s death a suicide but, according to Wendol Lee, President of Operation Help Civil Rights Group (OHCRG), the family has called for a second, independent autopsy which should be completed next month. Lee’s group is active in Mississippi and surrounding states on issues related to civil rights violations and 300 people of the county, he said, asked for OHCRG’s help, fearing Ku Klux Klan involvement and that there would soon be more hangings of innocent people.

The group performed its own investigation and Tuesday released certain findings at a news conference held in the southern state. “We still don’t believe that it was a suicide. We’re asking that some kind of charges be brought on [the sheriff] for tampering with the evidence, not taping off the scene, allowing people to come all around and walk through the area. We don’t think there was a full investigation,” Lee said in a phone interview hours before addressing the press. He shared that at least one person claims to have seen Carter talking with a sheriff’s deputy some time before the hanging but it appears that information was never investigated. This only deepens OHCRG’s suspicions and their call for an independent investigation into Sheriff Ricky Banks’ actions. “All he [Banks] did was walk over there and said there was a suicide and we believe he’s covering up something,” he said of Banks, who is Caucasian.

A Dec. 16 editorial in the Greenwood Commonwealth Newspaper (GCN) outlined the careless degree to which investigation of Carter’s death was handled. Days after the death, photos of the body hanging on a tree began circulating on the internet and even on websites of certain news outlets. The photos were never sourced as to who took them and as controversy grew, many sites pulled the photos down. The editorial explained that neither the coroner nor the sheriff’s department took or distributed photos and suggested that someone with a cell phone had taken them. Banks reportedly said his department was told that a person was bragging about taking the pictures and posting them on Facebook. Adding to the mystery, State Senator David Jordan – who is Black – was one of the first to receive photos and according to a Dec. 19 GCN article, he said he obtained permission from Carter’s family before releasing them to certain media outlets, however, he “declined to disclose where he got the images.” The Senator had not responded to requests for comment, as of press time.

Lee maintains that little about the investigation of Carter’s death was handled in the right way and is looking forward to release of the second autopsy, at which time OHCRG plans to issue a full report of their findings and then decide what next steps should be taken. “There hasn’t been any evidence yet to support that he did hang himself but we don’t want to rule out anything. We want to make sure that’s what it is – that they did hang him.” Banks, according to an aide in the sheriff’s department, was out of the office until after the new year and unavailable for comment. Carter’s family has retained an attorney who also awaits results of the second autopsy, after which time a decision will be made on further legal action.

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