As Black Hanging Deaths in the U.S. Are on the Rise, Black Communities Are Looking to the UN to Help

From a public park in Georgia to a college campus in Mississippi, young Black men and women are being found hanging from trees—and within hours or days, authorities routinely slap the same official stamp onto the file: Suicide. No foul play suspected. Case closed. As federal civil rights interventions remain slow or non-existent, Black Americans have been forced to look elsewhere for protection and the truth – including the UN.

During the Sept. 26 episode of “The Joy Reid Show,” host Joy Reid and Georgetown University law professor and MSNOW legal analyst Paul Butler unpacked the disturbing pattern of recent Black hanging deaths in a painful, yet necessary conversation.

“We’re now finding—what are we up to, a dozen or more people being found hanged all over the country—in particular, in the South,” Reid said. “We don’t have a Justice Department, we don’t have a Civil Rights Division to investigate either these hangings, the Tasia Fortune case, or especially the Nolan Wells case, which happened on federal land. Where is the Justice Department?”

That question demands an answer as Black families across America are repeatedly told to accept suicide as the only explanation. In September 2025, 21-year-old Demartravion “Trey” Reed was found hanging from a tree in the middle of Delta State University’s campus in Mississippi. According to ABC News, no foul play was suspected.

One year prior in September 2024, 21-year-old Javion Magee was found hanging from a tree in Vance County, North Carolina—another suspicious death that local authorities deemed a suicide. Nearly two years later in May 2026, Juliana Nzita, 16, was discovered hanging on church grounds in Charlotte. Police ruled her death a suicide, the Charlotte Observer reported.

RELATED: Hanging Death of Black Man in Maryland Serves as a Reminder of a Painful Past

“Which is why the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is asking the United Nations to get involved,” Butler said. “It’s like the old days where we can’t trust the federal government, we can’t trust the state government. We literally have to go to the body that was responsible for international human rights to make sure our rights as African Americans—as people who are survivors and victims of crime—to make sure that we are getting equal justice under the law. We can’t get it from the feds, we can’t get it from the state—we have to go to the international tribunal.” That appeal to global authorities highlights just how deep, and historical the breach of trust runs for Reid.

“It’s going back to when civil rights organizations in the 1960s were doing that, or in the 1920s were saying, ‘We need to look to someone outside of this land, outside of this country to try to get justice,’” Reid added. “I think of W.E.B. Du Bois traveling all over the world and saying we’ve got to find some international body—that was even before the U.N. existed—that could speak to the peril of Black men, women, and children in America. I’ve never felt so unsafe.” And that lack of federal protection extends beyond hangings.

Nolan Wells, an 18-year-old Black college athlete, mysteriously vanished during a Fourth of July gathering on Horn Island. He was found dead days later under deeply suspicious circumstances, The Root previously told you. Despite the discovery occurring on federal territory, head injuries documented on his body, and no water found in his lungs to support claims that he drowned, prosecutors announced that no criminal charges would be filed.

When local authorities rush to close cases, Black families are forced to build their own path to the truth. To counter immediate suicide rulings, families can hire independent, board-certified forensic pathologists for second autopsies—specifically looking for signs of a struggle or blunt force trauma. Grassroots crowdfunding drives are ensuring these families aren’t priced out of justice, offering money for legal retainers when police refuse to dig deeper.

On the ground, the Black South is drawing strength from the Deacons for Defense and Justice—an armed African American self-defense organization founded in 1964 to protect Black communities from the Ku Klux Klan during the Civil Rights Movement.

Additionally, local residents are encouraged to organize neighborhood watch groups and set up community-owned security surveillance to monitor vulnerable areas and keep their communities safe from racial terror.