Nolan Wells, a summer of Black hanging deaths, and why history demands investigation without surrendering to speculation
By Michael Smith — Reflective MVS
Today, Nolan Wells should have turned 19.
There should have been cake. Text messages. Somebody clowning him about getting old at the ancient age of nineteen. Another year of college football. Another year of figuring out who he was becoming.
Instead, his family is gathering to pray.
Nolan was 18 when he traveled to Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast with friends on July 4. He did not return with them. His body was recovered two days later.
More than six weeks later, his family is still asking the most primitive question a parent can ask:
What happened to our son?
The answer remains unsettled.
A private autopsy commissioned by Nolan's family classified his cause and manner of death as undetermined pending further investigation. Mississippi's official autopsy has since been completed, but its findings have not been released publicly. Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath says the completed investigation, including the state autopsy, will be presented to a grand jury. She has also emphasized that presenting the case to a grand jury does not itself mean investigators have found evidence of a crime; she says the process is standard for most unnatural or suspicious deaths in the county.
Meanwhile, the case has escaped Mississippi.
The NAACP's Office of General Counsel has joined the family's legal team alongside civil-rights attorney Ben Crump. The Congressional Black Caucus has formally asked the Department of Justice and FBI to conduct an independent federal review.
Nolan's death is not a hanging case.
That needs to be said plainly because accuracy matters here.
But his death arrived in the middle of something else happening across Black America: a succession of reports involving young Black people found hanging, often from trees, followed almost immediately by another familiar phrase:
No evidence of foul play.
Some of those deaths have been officially ruled suicides. Some remain under investigation. In at least one case, social media transformed an unconfirmed detail into established fact.
And that is where this story becomes more complicated than the internet would like.
Because there are two easy stories to tell.
One says every Black person found hanging from a tree must have been lynched.
The other says authorities called it suicide, so everybody should shut up and go home.
Neither is journalism.
Neither is history.
And neither is good enough.
The Tree Carries History
A tree is an ordinary thing until history makes it something else.
Shade. Roots. Leaves. Childhood swings.
And, in America, terror.
The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than 4,400 racial-terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950. These killings were not merely individual murders committed by especially hateful people. They were instruments of racial control, often carried out publicly and frequently tolerated, ignored or facilitated by authorities. Their purpose was larger than killing the person at the end of the rope. The message was intended for everybody watching.
So when a Black body is found hanging from a tree in Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina or anywhere else in this country, Black people do not encounter that image as historical virgins.
We have seen the photograph before.
Our grandparents saw it.
Their grandparents sometimes saw the body.
That does not mean every hanging death of a Black person is a lynching.
It means government officials should stop behaving surprised when two sentences and a police press release fail to erase 150 years of muscle memory.
History is not forensic evidence.
But neither is history irrelevant.
Kyle Bassinga: When the Family Says Stop Speculating
Kyle Bassinga was 21 when he was found dead in a wooded area of Fair Oaks Park in Cobb County, Georgia, on February 18.
His death quickly generated online suspicion.
Cobb County Police later said investigators reviewed the evidence and determined Bassinga was alone when he died, with no indication of foul play. His parents issued their own statement through the department.
And their statement matters.
They said investigators had been professional, transparent and diligent. They said they trusted the process. They asked the public to rely on official information and stop speculating.
That cannot simply be brushed aside because it interrupts a better conspiracy.
If we say Black families deserve to be heard when they distrust an investigation, then Black families deserve to be heard when they trust one too.
Otherwise we are not listening to families.
We are renting their grief for whatever argument we already wanted to make.
Juliana Nzita: A Suicide Ruling Without an Autopsy
Then there is Juliana Nzita.
She was 16.
Juliana had been missing for several days when her body was found May 8 on church property in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police ruled her death a suicide. Investigators said they found no defensive wounds, no evidence of physical or sexual assault, and no indication of outside involvement.
But there was no autopsy.
That decision later became part of the controversy surrounding the case. Juliana's family requested an autopsy and hired an attorney. Charlotte's Community Relations Committee questioned police about the investigation, including whether it had been sufficiently thorough and whether authorities had adequately considered the family's grief and concerns.
Those facts do not prove Juliana was murdered.
They prove there are legitimate questions about process.
There is a difference.
We should be mature enough to hold it.
To'Nea Miller: When Social Media Writes the Police Report
The death of 27-year-old To'Nea Nicole Miller in Miami may offer the clearest warning about what happens when righteous suspicion outruns evidence.
Miller was found dead near Gwen Cherry Park on June 18.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office said its investigation found no evidence of foul play and that the circumstances were consistent with suicide.
Her sister disputed that conclusion and wanted more answers.
Then the internet did what the internet does.
Posts began declaring that Miller had been found hanging from a tree.
That detail traveled so widely it became part of the story.
Except the Sheriff's Office had not publicly said she was found hanging from a tree.
That does not establish what happened one way or another. It establishes something else we ought to care about:
Repeating an allegation ten thousand times does not upgrade it into a fact.
And Black history deserves better than fan fiction dressed as activism.
If something terrible happened to To'Nea Miller, truth matters.
If she died by suicide, truth matters then too.
Either way, inventing evidence helps nobody.
Justice Kai James: Suspicion, Investigation, Then a Ruling
Justice Kai James was 21 years old and attending the Turner Job Corps in Albany, Georgia.
On June 21, he was found unresponsive outside the campus cafeteria after a hanging. Police initially classified his death as suspicious and investigated claims spreading among students and online.
Albany Police interviewed multiple people and reviewed available evidence. By July 20, Police Chief Michael Persley said the medical examiner had officially ruled James' death a suicide and investigators had ruled out foul play.
Again, the sequence matters.
Suspicion was not irrational.
Investigation was not unnecessary.
And an official finding cannot simply be discarded because it produced the answer some people did not expect.
Accountability cannot mean, "Investigate until you tell me what I already believe."
Jerard "Jay" Jackson: A Family Still Asking Questions
Jerard "Jay" Jackson was 28 when he disappeared after attending the Electric Forest music festival in Michigan.
Michigan State Police said Jackson had earlier contacted police about an alleged incident involving a friend. Investigators interviewed the people involved and said they found no evidence that the reported incident occurred.
Jackson later left the festival alone, according to police.
His phone and some belongings remained behind. His rental vehicle was eventually located, and his body was found in nearby woods.
Michigan State Police said preliminary evidence indicated suicide and no signs of foul play. At that stage, however, the investigation remained open pending the medical examiner's final report.
Jackson's family publicly challenged the preliminary conclusion and demanded more answers.
There is no contradiction in reporting both facts.
Police said one thing.
His family believes something else.
Until evidence resolves the disagreement, journalism's job is not to choose whichever version gets more reposts.
It is to tell you where the evidence actually stands.
Tasia Fortune: This One Is Still Open
On August 3, 29-year-old Tasia Fortune was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant house in Jackson, Mississippi.
She was a mother of four.
Her mother, Christy Spivey, has said emphatically that she does not believe her daughter took her own life.
But she has also resisted people automatically transforming her daughter's death into a racial murder before investigators determine what happened.
That deserves attention.
Jackson police continue investigating. An autopsy has been performed, but as of August 19 authorities have not publicly determined or released a final cause and manner of death.
A local councilman has requested federal assistance.
People want answers.
They should.
But "we need answers" and "I already know the answer" are not the same sentence.
Raleigh: What Transparency Can Look Like
Then, on August 15, another image hit social media.
A 32-year-old Black man had been found hanging from a tree in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina.
The reaction was immediate.
Lynching.
Another one.
What's happening to Black people?
This time, Raleigh Police Chief Rico Boyce publicly addressed the speculation.
Police said investigators reviewed traffic-camera footage showing the man walking alone toward the location. According to Boyce, footage showed no other person present when the death occurred, and investigators found no evidence that another person caused or contributed to his death.
The man's mother told authorities that he had previously struggled with mental-health issues.
Raleigh police have described the death as suicide, while the North Carolina medical examiner retains authority over the final official determination.
And there is something worth learning here.
People asked questions.
Police produced some of the evidence underlying their conclusion.
The historical concern did not disappear.
But the factual picture became clearer.
That is how trust works.
Not "because we said so."
Receipts.
Now We Have to Talk About Suicide
Here is where this conversation gets uncomfortable.
Black people die by suicide.
Young Black people die by suicide.
Black people sometimes die by hanging.
Those sentences should not be controversial.
The belief that suicide is somehow something Black people "don't do" is not cultural pride. It can become cultural negligence.
CDC researchers examining suicide rates between 2018 and 2023 found that while the overall suicide rate among Americans ages 10 to 24 fell 7 percent, it increased 29.4 percent among Black people in that age group.
Among Black adults ages 25 to 44, the rate increased 29.2 percent.
That is not a footnote.
That is a crisis.
If every Black suicide is immediately converted into a murder conspiracy, we risk hiding another killer standing directly in front of us.
Depression.
Isolation.
Trauma.
Economic instability.
Untreated mental illness.
The expectation that Black pain should always arrive wearing armor.
We have spent generations teaching Black children how to survive racism while sometimes forgetting to teach them how to say, "I am not okay."
Both conversations belong here.
Because concern about possible racial violence should never require us to pretend mental-health crises do not exist.
And Now We Have to Talk About Trust
But government institutions have their own problem.
They want the benefit of credibility they did not always earn.
There is something almost comical about American institutions telling Black people not to bring history into the room.
History is already sitting at the table.
Police departments were involved in racial terror.
Sheriffs sometimes watched lynchings.
Prosecutors declined prosecutions.
Juries acquitted men everybody knew committed murder.
Newspapers printed photographs.
Families kept the stories.
And now, generations later, somebody finds a Black person hanging from a tree and officials wonder why "no foul play suspected" does not function like holy water.
Come on now.
The answer cannot be perpetual suspicion.
But it cannot be historical amnesia either.
The answer is transparency.
Investigate thoroughly.
Preserve evidence.
Use independent medical examiners when appropriate.
Tell families what can legally be told.
Correct misinformation with evidence rather than contempt.
And when information cannot yet be released, explain why.
Trust is not a public-relations product.
It is an outcome.
What Ida B. Wells Would Recognize
There is a reason the name Wells carries an eerie resonance in this story.
More than a century ago, Ida B. Wells confronted America's lynching epidemic not by declaring every rumor true, but by investigating claims white America had already accepted.
She read newspaper accounts.
She examined individual cases.
She compared accusations with evidence.
She exposed lies.
The Library of Congress describes her work as using press accounts and firsthand investigation to uncover the truth about lynching.
That method matters now.
Black skepticism does not become stronger when it becomes careless.
It becomes stronger when it becomes forensic.
Ask harder questions.
Demand documents.
Follow timelines.
Separate witness statements from internet commentary.
Distinguish preliminary findings from final autopsies.
Correct ourselves when evidence changes.
And never confuse possible with proven.
That is not giving the system the benefit of the doubt.
That is refusing to give anybody else the benefit of sloppy thinking.
Back to Nolan
Which brings us back to Nolan Wells.
Again, Nolan was not found hanging from a tree.
His case belongs here because it sits at the intersection of the same questions.
A young Black person is dead.
A family says the explanation remains insufficient.
Authorities say the investigation continues.
The official autopsy exists but remains unreleased.
A grand jury is expected to review the evidence.
The NAACP has joined the family.
Members of Congress want federal scrutiny.
And somewhere between legitimate suspicion and reckless speculation sits a family that would probably trade every hashtag, press conference and television camera for one thing:
Their son.
On August 19, Nolan Wells should have turned 19.
Instead, his mother is still asking what happened.
She deserves an answer based on evidence.
Tasia Fortune's children deserve one.
Juliana Nzita's family deserved a process they could understand and interrogate.
Families who accept findings deserve enough respect not to have strangers rewrite the deaths of their children for engagement.
And Black people struggling with suicidal thoughts deserve to have their pain taken seriously rather than erased because acknowledging it complicates a political narrative.
The standard cannot be believe the police.
The standard also cannot be disbelieve the police.
The standard has to be:
Show us what happened.
Because a tree is not proof of murder.
A police statement is not proof of trustworthiness.
A family's disbelief is not forensic evidence.
A suicide ruling should not become sacred merely because the government issued it.
And history is not paranoia.
America taught Black people what a body hanging from a tree could mean.
It cannot now be offended that we remember.
But memory carries its own responsibility.
We owe the dead more than fear.
We owe them facts.
We owe them the truth.
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