
September 17th, 2026
A Black woman was found dead in Mississippi.
She was hanging from a tree.
Her name was Tasia Fortune.
She was 29 years old.
People found her on August 3.
She was behind an empty house in Jackson.
This brings back bad memories for many Black people.
They remember lynching in the U.S. South.
A man named Jarques Ratliff is 51 years old.
He is also Black.
He said he did not kill her.
He said this in court on Monday.
Police have not said why someone would kill her.
They say more people may be arrested.
Many Black people see a rope and think of lynching.
Lynching means killing someone without a trial.
This happened a lot in the South long ago.
A man named Brad Franklin is an activist in Jackson.
He said Black people in the South feel like they did in 1956 and 1966.
He said Mississippi has a racist history.
He said this made them strong.
The mother of Tasia Fortune is named Christy Spivey.
She is white.
She said she does not think race was the reason.
She said it was "very personal."
She said someone who knew her daughter did it.
In the last two years, about six Black women and men were found hanged in the South.
Police said some of them killed themselves.
Some people did not believe this.
They said police did not show much evidence.
A professor named Sean Joe works at Washington University in St. Louis.
He said police need evidence to say it was suicide.
Spivey said her daughter would not kill herself.
In North Carolina, police are looking into a death.
Demetrius Eugene Fleming was 38 years old.
He died on August 21.
Police are waiting for a doctor's report.
In February, police in Cobb County, Georgia, found a body in a park.
The man was Kyle Bassinga.
He was 21 years old.
Police said there was no sign of a crime.
But Lisa Cupid said many people thought of slavery and Jim Crow.
She is the County Commission Chairwoman.
A student named Trey Reed died at Delta State University.
He died in September 2025.
Police said it was suicide.
A man named Dennoriss Richardson died in Alabama.
He was 39 years old.
He died in September 2024.
Police said it was suicide.
His wife is named Leigh.
She said she does not believe he killed himself.
A private doctor looked at his body.
The doctor said it looked like he died by hanging.
This is according to news reports.
More than 4,400 Black people were lynched in the U.S.
This happened between Reconstruction and World War II.
This is according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
In 1955, a teenager named Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi.
This helped start the civil rights movement.
A professor named Karlos Hill works at the University of Oklahoma.
He said these lynchings were public on purpose.
He said they wanted to scare all Black people.
In September, almost 60 members of Congress signed a letter.
They want the Justice Department to investigate these hanging deaths.
They want the Justice Department to use the Emmett Till Antilynching Act.
This law passed in 2022.
The Justice Department said it got the letter.
But it has not answered.
This is according to the office of Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
She wrote the letter.
September 17th, 2026

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