Discovery of hanged black man in Mississippi raises questions about lynching

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Discovery of hanged black man in Mississippi raises questions about possible lynching

Spectre of racial violence looms large in Mississippi as authorities investigate whether ex-convict committed suicide or was murdered

PUBLISHED : Monday, 23 March, 2015, 12:41am
UPDATED : Monday, 23 March, 2015, 8:25am

Los Angeles Times

Otis Byrd

They found the black man's body hanging by a bedsheet from a locust tree. Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas called in everybody he could think of. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. The FBI.

By late Friday, a day after the disturbing discovery, they had identified the man as Otis Byrd, a 54-year-old riverboat worker who had been missing for more than two weeks.

What they didn't have was the answer to the question: Was it a lynching?

TV reporters film the tree where Otis Byrd was found hanging in Clairborne County. Photo: TNS

At a time when violence against African-Americans - some of it at the hands of the police - has become one of the nation's most incendiary points of civic friction, reports of a black man dangling from a tree deep in the woods of rural Mississippi was bound to attract attention.

Across the US, there were 4,742 lynchings between 1882 and 1968, about 3,400 of which targeted blacks, while 1,297 involved whites - mainly allies of civil rights efforts - according to Mark Potok of the

At a time when violence against African-Americans - some of it at the hands of the police - has become one of the nation's most incendiary points of civic friction, reports of a black man dangling from a tree deep in the woods of rural Mississippi was bound to attract attention.

Across the US, there were 4,742 lynchings between 1882 and 1968, about 3,400 of which targeted blacks, while 1,297 involved whites - mainly allies of civil rights efforts - according to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a civil rights advocacy group. Mississippi had the most lynchings, 581.

Claiborne County has the third-highest percentage of African-American residents of any US county, an 84 per cent majority of the population.

And unlike other parts of Mississippi, Claiborne County was not known for racial violence.

As television crews trickled into town, local residents appeared on the sidewalks of this small rural town, home to fewer than 1,500 people, carrying signs now familiar in cities across the US: "Black Lives Matter".

"Somebody did something to him," said Stephanie Atlas, 47, a home health aide.

Officials said they had not yet determined how Byrd had died, though a federal law enforcement official said investigators were leaning toward suicide as an explanation. And some wondered whether it might have been retaliation: Byrd was convicted of killing a 55-year-old white convenience store clerk, Lucille Trim, in 1980, served his time and was released in 2006.

"They're just retaliating for what he did," said Anita Smith, 54, who went to school with Byrd.

Recently, Byrd rented a house across town on Old Rodney Road near an area where Trim's relatives live known as Trim Hill (the sheriff said investigators will be questioning Trim's relatives).

"We're trying to determine the cause of his death," said Donald Alway, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi.

Byrd's body was found hanging, fully clothed, with his boots on and a skullcap obscuring his face. Trees grow thick in surrounding woods, veiled with vines and Spanish moss, concealing the area from nearby homes.

There was no note. There were no other visible signs of distress on Byrd's body. The man's hands and feet were not tied or bound, his mouth not gagged.

Derrick Johnson, president of the state's National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, praised the way investigators were handling the case so far, but didn't rule out lynching because "we still live in a time when the thought of racial hate crimes is a possibility".

Still, there have been several other cases in recent years of black men who at first appeared to have been killed because of their race but whose deaths were later ruled suicide or murder for other reasons.

Five years ago, NAACP leaders questioned FBI and local officials in Greenwood, Mississippi, who ruled that the hanging of a 26-year-old black man with a history of mental illness was a suicide.

Racial animus was suspected two years ago, when the body of Marco McMillian, a 33-year-old black openly gay mayoral candidate, was found in a ditch in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

He had been strangled, and his body was burned. A 22-year-old black man who claimed he felt threatened when McMillian came on to him was later convicted of the murder and sentenced to life this month.