The death of a Black Mississippi woman found hanging from a tree has stirred distressing memories of the grim history of lynchings across the U.S. South.

The body of Tasia Fortune, 29, was discovered behind a derelict residence in Jackson, the state capital, on Aug. 3.

Jarques Ratliff, 51, who is likewise Black, entered a plea of not guilty to murder on Monday.

Police and prosecutors have refrained from disclosing a suspected motive and indicate that further arrests are anticipated.

Whatever the circumstances of a case may be, for many Black people, the image of a rope and noose evokes the legacy of lynching and vigilante violence against Black people in the U.S., and it brings deep pain and trauma.

“Black folks down here in 2026, we are feeling and experiencing some of the same things we felt in 1956 and 1966, and that should not be happening,” Jackson activist Brad Franklin said of Fortune’s death.

But given that it’s Mississippi, and given the racist history of our state, our skin has been considerably toughened in order to contend with it.

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Fortune's mother, Christy Spivey, asserted that she does not believe race bore any relevance to her daughter's death.

Spivey is white.

She said Fortune's father is Black.

"I believe this is something deeply personal, profoundly personal," Spivey said, maintaining that someone acquainted with Fortune was implicated.

Over the past two years, roughly half a dozen Black women and men have been found hanged across the South.

In some of those cases, police quickly ruled the deaths suicides — a conclusion that has often drawn skepticism rooted in history, since investigators offer only limited evidence to rule out foul play.

“I say let the evidence show,” said Sean Joe, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis and a nationally recognized authority on suicidal behavior among Black people.

“But if... you arrive at a definition or a conclusion of suicide, you must provide some evidence for that.”

Spivey maintains that she is unequivocally convinced her daughter would never have taken her own life.

“Absolutely not. Even if she were capable of climbing that tree, no, no, she would never, ever, ever,” Spivey said.

In Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, authorities are conducting an investigation into the Aug. 21 death of Demetrius Eugene Fleming, aged 38.

Police Chief Lawrence Wiggins stated on Tuesday that his department is awaiting reports from a medical examiner.

In February, police in Cobb County, Georgia, discovered the body of 21-year-old Kyle Bassinga in a park.

Although investigators stated there was no indication of foul play, Bassinga’s death “caused many to think of the days of slavery and of Jim Crow,” said Cobb County Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid.

The death of Trey Reed, a 21-year-old Black student at Mississippi's Delta State University, in September 2025 was ruled a suicide, as was that of Dennoriss Richardson, 39, in September 2024 in Alabama's rural Colbert County.

Richardson’s wife, Leigh, has said she doesn’t believe he killed himself and, as has occurred in other cases, a private autopsy was conducted, finding his death consistent with a hanging, according to news reports.

Leigh Richardson told ABC News that, despite the chronic asthma and other breathing problems that would cause her husband anxiety attacks, “that is just not a way that he would even process to leave this world.”

According to the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, more than 4,400 lynchings occurred in the United States between Reconstruction and World War II.

The 1955 lynching of teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi, over accusations that he had flirted with a white woman, helped to catalyze the civil rights movement.

“These were public, intentionally so, in order to convey terror—not just to the individuals and their families, but to a whole community,” said Karlos Hill, professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of “Beyond The Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory.”

In September, nearly 60 members of Congress signed a letter demanding that the Justice Department investigate the hanging deaths of Black individuals and enforce the 2022 Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime.

“In this moment of anti-Blackness and emboldened white supremacy, we cannot stand idly by while the strange fruit of Black bodies hang from trees across the country,” U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley said in a statement.

The Justice Department acknowledged receipt of the letter but has yet to issue a response, according to the office of Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat and the letter’s lead author.

Trent Thompson, 58, of Florence, Alabama, says that the recent hangings and deaths of Black people led to talk in the Black community about the death this summer of Nolan Xavier Wells.

Wells, 18, and Black, joined friends on a Fourth of July boat excursion to an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast but did not return with them.

His body was found two days later.

Scrutiny of the investigation has deepened against the backdrop of the state’s history of racist violence and distrust of law enforcement — triggering suspicion in the Black community toward many cases involving deaths of Blacks, Thompson said.

"I am comfortable with who I am," he said.