I’ve been telling y’all that the official stories around all of these Black deaths don’t line up with the physical facts. Yesterday, Dr. Connor showed you the national data proving that mismatch is documented, repeated, and predictable. The numbers back the contradictions you’ve already seen with your own eyes.

We ain’t talking theory.
We are talking pattern.

So when we talk about these cases, we’re not talking about isolated tragedies. We’re talking about a systematic mismatch between what the state calls it and what the evidence actually is.

Yesterday’s conversation gave us the language and the data to name that mismatch without apology.

And once you see the pattern, you have to look at the ruling itself because that’s where the pattern starts.

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The Ruling Is the Blindfold

What Dr. Connor made clear is that a ruling ain’t just a label; it’s a gate. Once a death is ruled suicide, the entire damn system shuts down. The investigation stops. The case is removed from homicide and hate‑crime counts. And reopening it becomes rare and difficult.

That ain’t a conclusion.
That’s a mechanism.

And when you understand that mechanism, you understand why so many Black cases get buried before the facts ever get examined. The ruling ain’t describing reality; it’s controlling it. It’s deciding who gets counted, what gets ignored, and what never gets looked at again.

This is why the mismatch matters; not because the ruling is “sad,” but because the ruling is structurally powerful and fucking dangerous.

And if the ruling is the gate, then the record it feeds into is the landscape, and that landscape is broken, y’all.

The Record Is Wrong At Scale

Dr. Connor brought the data that should change how you see every ruling moving forward. Period.

More than half of deaths from police violence never make it into the national vital‑statistics system. And the miss rate is even higher when the dead are Black.

Let me say that again: the record is wrong at scale.

So when you see a ruling on a Black death that doesn’t match the physical facts, you ain’t looking at a “rare mistake.” You’re looking at the local expression of a national failure; a failure baked into the system that produces these rulings in the first place.

If the record is wrong, the rulings built on that record are wrong too.
And once you understand that, you have to look at probability, because the numbers don’t support the story we’re being told.

Suicide Ain’t the Probable Explanation

This is the part white folks pretend not to understand. The Black suicide rate is less than half the white rate, y’all. The second‑lowest of any group the government tracks. So when a Black person is found under contradictory circumstances, and the ruling comes back suicide, that ruling ain’t “expected.” It is statistically unlikely.

And Dr. Connor brought the data that makes it even clearer: when the circumstances are ambiguous, Black people are more than twice as likely to have that ambiguity resolved as suicide instead of undetermined.

Same facts.
Same doubt.
Different outcome.

Y’all, that ain’t probability.
That’s classification bias.

And this is why I say suicide “just ain’t probable” in the cases I’ve been presenting. Not because of emotion; because of math.

And once you see the bias, you see the erasure; because the ruling doesn’t just mislabel the case. It removes it from the pattern entirely.

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The Ruling Erases the Pattern

Another point Dr. Connor made (and one you saw on screen) is that once a death is ruled suicide, it can never be counted as a homicide or a hate crime. The classification itself erases the pattern. It removes the case from every category that would reveal what’s actually happening.

That’s why these rulings matter.
Not because of what they claim happened, but because of what they erase.

When the ruling doesn’t match the physical facts, the ruling becomes the problem; not the family, not the community, not the questions. The ruling is what blocks the truth from ever being counted, tracked, or investigated. And our work is to remove that block.

And once you understand the block, you understand why these rulings demand real investigation; not acceptance. And documented patterns require documented responses, which is why structure matters.

Why These Rulings Demand Investigation

Everything you saw yesterday (every data point, every disparity, every structural failure) points to the same conclusion: these rulings do not match reality.

Not the base rate.
Not the national record.
Not the racial disparities in classification.
Not the physical contradictions that show up again and again.

When a ruling contradicts the evidence, the ruling deserves scrutiny.
When a ruling contradicts the statistics, it deserves investigation.
When a ruling contradicts the pattern, it deserves to be challenged.

This ain’t fucking “controversial.”
This is documented.

And once you understand that, you understand why these rulings cannot stand as final.

Why Community Command Centers Matter

And this is where my August 15th show ties in. If you watched it, you already know what a Community Command Center is supposed to look like; not a metaphor, not a slogan, but a structured hub where contradictions get tracked, timelines get built, evidence gets preserved, families get support, and data like Dr. Connor’s becomes part of our infrastructure.

Watch the show

Because once you understand the pattern, you understand the need for structure. You cannot fight misclassification with vibes. You fight it with organization. And trust, I know how to organize.

Yesterday gave you the numbers.
Saturday gave you the blueprint.
Today you step up and start the work.

And once you step up, you need to know exactly where we stand.

Where We Stand Now

You didn’t hear “opinions” yesterday.
You heard evidence.

You didn’t hear “concerns.”
You heard probability.

You didn’t hear “stories.”
You heard documented patterns.

Dr. Connor didn’t just support my stance; she fortified it. Her data shows suicide is not the probable explanation in these cases. Her analysis shows these rulings deserve scrutiny, not closure. And our work shows communities need structure to challenge them.

This is how we protect our people.
This is how we stop the white blindfold from doing its job.
This is how we make sure the state’s ruling ain’t the last word.

If You Want to Examine Dr. Connor’s Data Yourself

If you want to access the data Dr. Connor presented yesterday (the full breakdowns, the national record, the classification disparities, the probability tables) sign up for a free account: https://community.laboracollective.com/members/

Dr. Connor is working on linking all of her data in one place so you can find it, explore it, and understand the pattern for yourself. She’s also building tools that will let members query the database directly, so you can see the numbers without waiting on institutions that refuse to track our people accurately.

Y’all, I need you to support the work and spread the word. Every dollar you spend funds independent research, and independent research is crucial in our fight to stop the racial genocide of Black people.

Police claimed Raynard was upset because a friend “was in love with someone else.” That’s the entire justification they used to declare his death a suicide. A Black teenager in rural Mississippi (where white people were openly targeting him) ends up dead, and the state shrugs: “Oh, he was sad about a girl.”

Y’all, that’s the level of disrespect we’re dealing with.

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The State’s Story Never Matched What Raynard’s Family Already Knew

Raynard’s family didn’t hesitate. They didn’t wobble. They didn’t “struggle to accept” anything. They said murder from the beginning because they knew exactly what he was dealing with in that town. They weren’t guessing. They weren’t emotional. They weren’t confused. They were living inside the danger Mississippi pretended didn’t exist.

This wasn’t some abstract “Mississippi racism.”
This wasn’t background noise.
This wasn’t generational trauma floating in the air.

This was white hostility aimed at Raynard, directly at him, because of who he was and who he dared to be around. White people in that town had a problem with Raynard, specifically. They made it known. They acted on it. They escalated it.

His family had already seen suspicious activity near the home. They already knew the environment wasn’t safe. They already knew the tension wasn’t imagined. They already knew the threats weren’t hypothetical. So, when Mississippi came back with that lazy, disrespectful “he was sad about a girl” story, the family didn’t buy it for a fucking second, because it didn’t match the reality they were living in. The state’s story never matches our reality, ever.

They knew the state wasn’t protecting Raynard.
They knew the state wasn’t investigating.
They knew the state wasn’t telling the truth.

They knew Mississippi was protecting racist ass Mississippi.

Mississippi Really Thought We Wouldn’t Notice This Shit

Let’s talk about the holes, because Mississippi really thought we were stupid enough to let this slide. The second you put pressure on their story, it falls apart. Not cracks; collapses. Shocker (insert eye roll).

• Raynard wasn’t living in some peaceful ass town. He was living in a place where white people were actively targeting him, and Mississippi pretended that had nothing to do with anything.

• His family had already seen suspicious activity near the house days before. Mississippi ignored it as if it were irrelevant.

• The racial tension was current, specific, and directed at him, and the state acted like that context didn’t exist.

• They rushed the conclusion so fast it’s insulting. They didn’t investigate; they decided.

• The medical examiner used “lack of certain injuries” as proof of suicide, which is Mississippi’s way of saying, “We didn’t find what we needed, so we’re just going to pretend that means he did it himself.” What the fuck kind of logic is that? They didn’t ask why those injuries might not show up. They didn’t consider the environment, the timeline, the targeting, or the suspicious activity around the home. They treated nothing as proof, which is exactly how you close a case you never intended to investigate.

• The coroner dismissed racial motive because “no hate group left a message.” Mississippi really said: “No note, no racism.” In Mississippi. In 2000. Be serious.

Every single part of their story depends on us not thinking. Not asking. Not remembering the environment he was living in. Not connecting the dots they refused to touch. These ain’t small gaps. These ain’t “unanswered questions.” These are the exact kind of contradictions Mississippi has been using for decades to disappear Black murders.

And they expected us to swallow it.

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Mississippi Expected Us to Take Their Word Over Our Reality

Mississippi really thought they could hand us this flimsy little story and we’d just swallow it. They expected the family to accept it. They expected the community to accept it. They expected us to accept it. They looked at a Black teenager who’d been dealing with white hostility aimed straight at him, and they reduced his entire life, his entire danger, his entire context to some lazy “he was sad about a girl” narrative they didn’t even bother to prove and that Raynard’s mother denied.

This ain’t an investigation. It’s a dismissal. It’s Mississippi doing what Mississippi always does: protecting itself, not the truth. They didn’t explain the suspicious activity around the home. They didn’t explain the racial tension. They didn’t explain the contradictions. They didn’t explain anything. They just declared suicide and walked away like the conversation was over.

Mississippi didn’t solve this case. Mississippi shut it down. And they expected us to nod along like we haven’t seen this exact pattern for decades.

They expected us to forget the context
Forget the hostility
Forget the history
Forget the targeting
Forget the contradictions

They expected us to take their word for it because they said it with confidence.

Absolutely not.

What You Do Next Because Mississippi Doesn’t Get the Final Word

If you’re here, you ain’t here for symbolism. You’re here because you already know Mississippi’s pattern and you refuse to let them run it unchecked. Raynard’s case doesn’t get buried. It gets documented, amplified, and connected.

Keep Raynard’s name loud. Mississippi counts on silence. You break that by keeping his name in rotation; posts, threads, conversations, everywhere.

Build the contradiction ledger. Use the same structure you used for Javion Magee. A public list of every hole in Mississippi’s story. Every contradiction. Every unanswered question. Every detail the state ignored. This ledger stays open until the truth does.

Document the context Mississippi erased. Raynard wasn’t living in a damn vacuum. He was living in a town where white hostility was directed at him. Archive it. Collect the accounts. Collect the environment. Collect the reality Mississippi pretended didn’t exist.

Pressure the officials who closed this case. Not one person; a rotation. Calls, emails, public comments, meetings. You don’t let them forget this case exists.

Connect Raynard’s case to the pattern. This ain’t an isolated tragedy. This is part of the same architecture I have been naming for weeks. Raynard’s case is proof the pattern is old. Javion’s case is proof the pattern is ongoing.

Refuse the state’s version. Mississippi gave a conclusion, not an explanation. You don’t accept it. You don’t repeat it. You don’t let them flatten Raynard’s life into a lazy narrative that protects them.

Raynard’s case is not okay.
Raynard’s case is not closed.
Raynard’s case is not forgotten.
And you ain’t letting Mississippi bury him.

The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Support the work

Rest in Power, Young King

THEY BURIED RAYNARD. PULL HIM BACK OUT OF MISSISSIPPI’S LIE.

Mississippi buried Raynard Johnson’s death the moment it happened in 2000; turned a suspicious hanging in his own front yard into paperwork, slapped “suicide” on a story that never matched the context, and walked away like the case was settled.

They didn’t “struggle” with the conclusion. They didn’t “debate” it. They didn’t “investigate” anything. They buried it. Flat‑out.

Your job now is simple: drag this case back into the light. Push his name. Push the contradictions. Push the context Mississippi erased. Push the questions they never answered because answering them would expose the pattern they’ve been running for decades.

White silence is how Mississippi disappears Black children. Visibility is how you break their grip. They already buried Raynard. Don’t let them keep him there.

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DISCLAIMER

My anti‑racism articles are available only to my paid subscribers. This is intentional. As a Black woman doing this work, people will take, take, take from me if I don’t set hard boundaries. White folks especially will steal language, steal frameworks, and steal labor while pretending they are “sharing resources.” I do not work for free for white people, and I do not let my intellectual property get lifted and repackaged. I charge because theft is real, exploitation is real, and protecting my work is survival. Keep this work inside our community. Do not share my content with people who have not invested in it. Do not use my material to teach your own anti‑racism sessions or to build your own “curriculum.” If you want to leverage my work beyond your personal growth, ask me. And yes, there will be a fee.

There’s a form of racial disrespect so ordinary that white people pretend it’s accidental.

It ain’t a slur.
It ain’t a policy.
It ain’t even loud.

It’s the moment a white person stands directly on top of you in a store; breathing down your damn neck, hovering over your fucking shoulder, acting like your body is just part of the shelving. It’s the aisle‑blocking, the path‑cutting, the shoulder‑checking, the drifting into your space like you’re a ghost with mass.

Y’all, this is racialized disregard dressed up as everyday life. And it needs to fucking stop.

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THE ROOT: THEY WERE TAUGHT TO WALK THROUGH US

Let’s stop pretending this shit is random. It ain’t. It has a lineage (a straight line from slave society to right now) and Black people feel that continuity in our bodies every damn day.

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On September 11, 2024, Javion Magee was found dead in Henderson, North Carolina, and nothing about that day makes sense. A 21‑year‑old Black truck driver from Chicago ends up dead in a random patch of North Carolina woods, and before his family can even breathe, the state stamps suicide on his life like it’s the easiest box to check.

Fast.
Neat.
Convenient.

And they’ve kept it that way for damn near two years.

That’s the pattern. That’s the script. And I’m not letting them run it without interruption. And neither are you.

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The Distance Was the First Red Flag

Let’s be real: Black men do not drive across multiple states to kill themselves. That ain’t speculation; that’s what the damn numbers say. Suicide among Black men overwhelmingly happens close to home, close to community, close to familiar ground. Not in some random rural town they’ve never stepped foot in.

So explain to me why a 21‑year‑old from Chicago (with family waiting for him in Houston, with a brand‑new job, with no mental‑health history, no criminal history, no crisis on record) would leave Pennsylvania, deliver a load, and then decide, “Yeah, let me go die behind a tractor‑repair shop in Henderson, North Carolina.”

Why Henderson?
Why that lot?
Why that tree?
Why that distance?

None of this shit aligns with the data. None of this shit aligns with human behavior. None of this shit aligns with who Javion was.

White America wants us to pretend this is normal. It ain’t. It’s statistically absurd and narratively convenient. This is the pattern: when the story the state spins doesn’t fit, they force a story that does.

The Timeline Falls Apart the Second You Touch It

The sheriff’s timeline is supposed to “clear things up,” but all it does is expose how much they ain’t saying.

He delivers the load.
He idles in a dirt lot.
He buys tobacco.
He buys rope.
He goes to a hotel but doesn’t stay.
He returns to the lot.
He walks toward the woods.
He walks back.
He walks toward the woods again.
Then he’s dead.

What happened between 7:30 p.m. and 10:08 a.m.? Who was in that area overnight? Why was his body found outside the fence line, not deep in the woods where he supposedly walked? Why did the sheriff rule out foul play before the autopsy was complete?

And let’s talk about the rope purchase. Buying rope proves he bought rope. It does not prove intent. It does not prove suicide. It does not prove he wasn’t coerced, followed, threatened, or intercepted.

White America loves a receipt when it helps them close a case. This is the pattern: they give you a timeline that looks “official,” but the gaps are where the truth lives.

The Story Only Works If You Don’t Think

Y’all, the state’s narrative ain’t just “incomplete.” It’s engineered to fall apart the second you stop nodding and start thinking.

They want us to believe a young Black man (with plans, with family waiting, with a route ahead of him) walked into the woods of a town he’d never been to, tied a rope to a tree, and killed himself in a way that doesn’t match the data, doesn’t match the logistics, and doesn’t match the damn physics.

And the moment you ask even one real question, the whole thing cracks.

Where’s the object he used to elevate himself?
Where’s the explanation for the rope height?
Where’s the reason he’d choose that location?
Where’s the witness who saw him enter the woods at night?
Where’s the evidence of what happened between 7:30 p.m. and 10:08 a.m.?
Where’s the justification for ruling out foul play before the autopsy was even done?

They don’t have fucking answers; they have a conclusion. They don’t have clarity; they have a fucking script. They don’t have truth; they have a cover.

Outdoor hangings of Black men are historically charged, statistically rare, and logistically difficult. But somehow, every time a Black man is found dead in a way that echoes our historical terror, white America sprints to declare it “suicide” before the family even gets the damn phone call.

That ain’t coincidence. That ain’t incompetence. That ain’t “just how the evidence looks.”

That’s the pattern:

Erase the possibility of harm.
Erase the possibility of witnesses.
Erase the possibility of accountability.
Erase the Black person.

This ain’t a thin fucking story; it’s a story designed to make you stop asking questions.

And I ain’t stopping…

Suspicion Is the Only Reason We Survive

Let me say this without any sugar: Black suspicion is not some emotional reaction. It ain’t fear talking. It ain’t “grief making you imagine things.” It’s math. It’s memory. It’s survival. It’s the only reason any of us are still here.

Because every time a Black person ends up dead under circumstances that don’t make sense, white America rushes to rewrite the scene before the body is even cold. They sanitize the timeline. They flatten the contradictions. They erase the logistics. They erase the witnesses. They erase the possibility of harm. And then they hand us a story we’re supposed to swallow because it came stamped with a badge.

FUCK THAT.

That’s the same damn pattern our people have been fighting for centuries:

Disappear the Black person.
Disappear the truth.
Disappear the accountability.
Disappear the questions.
Disappear the possibility that someone white did something.

And when we refuse to accept their version, they call us emotional. They call us irrational. They call us conspiracy‑minded. They call us everything except what we actually are: correct.

Because nothing about Javion’s death makes sense.

Not the distance.
Not the location.
Not the logistics.
Not the timeline.
Not the rushed conclusion.
Not the way the story collapses the second you touch it.

Suspicion ain’t optional here; it’s required. Suspicion ain’t dramatic; it’s accurate. Suspicion ain’t paranoia; it’s pattern recognition.

And white America hates when Black people recognize the pattern.

This Is How You Dig Up What They Buried

If you live in that area (Henderson, Vance County, anywhere near where Javion was found), understand this: this case ain’t new. It’s been buried since 2024. The silence ain’t accidental; it’s structural. And that means your work ain’t “raising awareness.”

Your work is digging up what the state already tried to bury.

This ain’t just information. This is infrastructure. This goes straight into the community command center I already told y’all to stand up. You don’t wait for permission. You don’t wait for the state. You build your own system of accountability.

Here’s what goes in it; because this case is already cold, and you’re the ones warming it back up:

• A public ledger of unanswered questions. Not a Google Doc. A ledger. A physical board. A wall. A place where every contradiction is written down, where the whole community can see it; especially the ones the state hoped time would erase. If the state won’t answer these questions, the ledger stays open.

  “How high was the rope?”
  “What object did he use to elevate himself?”
  “Why was foul play ruled out before the autopsy?”
  “What happened between 7:30 p.m. and 10:08 a.m.?”

• A rotating team assigned to pressure officials. Not one person. A rotation. A schedule. People calling the sheriff’s office, the medical examiner, the county commissioners. People showing up at meetings. People asking the same questions until someone cracks. This case has been sitting for two years; your consistency is the only thing that will move it.

• A community‑run timeline reconstruction. You rebuild the timeline yourselves. You map the locations. You mark the gaps. You identify the blind spots. You track who was working, who was driving, who was present in that area overnight. The state already locked their version in place. You build the version that exposes what they left out.

• A witness‑safe zone. A literal place (a church basement, a community center room, someone’s garage) where people can come forward without fear. Two years have passed. People who were scared then might talk now.
  Give them a place to do it.

• A demand list. Not a petition. A list. A list of what the community expects the sheriff’s office to produce; the things they should’ve released in 2024:

  • Rope measurements

  • Branch height

  • Scene photos

  • Overnight patrol logs

  • Body‑cam footage

  • Surveillance timestamps

  This list gets posted publicly and updated publicly. If they don’t comply, that becomes part of the story.

• A communication team whose only job is to keep Javion’s name loud. Not symbolic. Loud. Inconvenient. Constant. Posts. videos. threads. flyers.
  White America disappears Black people through silence; you counter with volume. This case has already been quiet for two years; your noise is the only thing that breaks that.

• A rapid‑response crew. If the sheriff’s office releases new information, if media drops a story, if officials try to close the case again; this crew responds immediately. No waiting. No “we’ll discuss it next week.” Rapid response is how you stop the narrative from hardening.

If you are in that area, this is your work.
This is your infrastructure.
This is your responsibility.

Because Javion did not die in your community; he was found in your community; and then buried by your state. And that means you have the power to refuse their version and build your own.

White America disappears Black people by controlling the narrative.
You fight back by building a command center that refuses to let the narrative stand.

If you want to get involved, this is how you do it; not symbolic, not performative, but structural. We match the same energy and strategy they used to disappear Javion in 2024.

The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Support the work

Rest in Power, King

THEY BURIED JAVION. DIG HIM BACK UP.

North Carolina buried Javion Magee’s death the moment it happened in 2024; turned a suspicious hanging into paperwork, stamped suicide on a story that never made sense, and walked away like the case was closed.

They didn’t “try” to bury it. They fucking buried it.

Your job now is simple: drag this case back into the light. Push his name. Push the contradictions. Push the questions the state never answered.

White silence is how they disappear Black people. Visibility is how you break their grip.

They already buried Javion. Don’t let them keep him there.

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DISCLAIMER

My anti‑racism articles and live sessions are available only to my paid subscribers. This is intentional. As a Black woman doing this work, people will take, take, take from me if I don’t set hard boundaries. White folks especially will steal language, steal frameworks, and steal labor while pretending they are “sharing resources.” I do not wo…

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His family said he was not suicidal.
His friends said he wasn’t suicidal.
There was no documented history of suicidal behavior.

But Mississippi called it a suicide. The FBI called it a suicide. The DOJ closed the case and walked away. Another Black man found hanging in Mississippi. Another “no foul play.” Another conclusion that doesn’t match the damn data.

This is where the story starts; not because it’s new, but because it’s familiar. Because Mississippi has been writing this same script for generations. And I’m going to keep naming it until people stop pretending these patterns are fucking coincidences.

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Mississippi’s Lineage of Violence: Same State, Same Pattern, Same Bullshit

Mississippi doesn’t get to pretend this is random. Mississippi doesn’t get to pretend this is rare. Mississippi doesn’t get to pretend this is “just one case.”

This is the same state that lynched Black people in broad daylight for decades. The same state where nearly 4,000 Black men, women, and children were lynched across the South between 1877 and 1950 (I suspect this number is higher), with Mississippi as one of the fucking epicenters. The same state where Black death was a spectacle, a warning, a message.

And here is the part Mississippi never wants to talk about, but I’m gonna keep saying it until it’s burned into your damn memory: the lineage didn’t disappear. It adapted.

The violence changed shape.
The language changed tone.
The conclusions changed vocabulary.

But the pattern stayed the same.

Black person found hanging → “suicide.” Black family says “he wasn’t suicidal” → ignored. Community says “this looks like a lynching” → dismissed. Federal agencies say “no evidence of homicide” → case closed.

Mississippi has been doing this for over a century. Otis Byrd’s case ain’t an outlier; it’s the inheritance Mississippi keeps passing down.

The Suicide Story Mississippi Keeps Telling Doesn’t Match the Damn Data

And since Mississippi loves to hide behind the word “suicide,” let’s drag the actual data back into the room, because the numbers don’t back up a damn thing they’re claiming.

Black men in the U.S. have significantly lower suicide rates than white men. Black men are far less likely to die by hanging as a method. Black men in their 50s (like Otis) have one of the lowest suicide rates of any adult demographic.

So when Mississippi rushes to call a hanging a suicide, they ain’t following evidence. They’re following a script.

And here’s the part that makes me really fucking furious: Mississippi knows this. The FBI knows this. The DOJ knows this. Everybody involved knows the data does not support their conclusion.

Because the data says:

• Black men rarely die by suicide

• Black men rarely choose hanging

• Black men in their 50s almost never die by suicide

• No history of suicidal behavior matters

• Missing for two weeks matters

• A white bedsheet around the neck matters

• A skullcap pulled down matters

• Deep in the woods matters

• Mississippi’s lynching history matters

But Mississippi doesn’t give a fuck about data. Mississippi cares about deniability. Calling a hanging of a Black man a suicide protects the state. Calling it “no foul play” protects the state. Calling it “not a hate crime” protects the state. The numbers contradict them. The circumstances contradict them. The history contradicts them.

But the conclusion stays the same. Otis Byrd wasn’t a statistical match for suicide. He was a match for Mississippi’s pattern; the one they keep pretending doesn’t fucking exist.

Calling This “Not a Hate Crime” Is the FBI Joining Mississippi’s Bullshit

The FBI decided Otis Byrd’s death was not a hate crime.
That’s the part that’s absolute garbage.

How the fuck does a Black man found hanging from a tree in Mississippi (a state soaked in the history of lynching) not meet the threshold for a hate crime? Give me a fucking break. These people really expect us to believe Black folks are out here killing themselves in the exact same manner used to terrorize and brutalize us since 1619.

Mississippi has a long record of racial violence.
Mississippi has a long record of lynching.
Mississippi has a long record of denying lynching.

And the FBI didn’t break the pattern.
They joined it.

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Mississippi’s Modern Strategy Is the Same Old Violence With Better PR

Mississippi doesn’t need a lynch mob anymore; it has institutions. It has coroners who rush to call things “accidents,” sheriffs who say “no foul play” before the body is even cold, investigators who close cases fast and hope the family shuts up, and federal partners who rubber‑stamp whatever the state says.

And Otis Byrd is not alone. Mississippi has a whole damn list, and every name exposes the same pattern.

• Channon Wilson, just 13 years old, found dead and the state sprinted to call it an “accidental drowning.”

• Trey Reed, found hanging at Delta State University, and Mississippi sanitized the circumstances before anyone could ask real questions.

• Damien Cameron, murdered by white deputies who then magically declared “no foul play.”

• Nolan Wells, found dead on Horn Island, and the racist Chief Medical Officer, Staci Turner, withheld his throat from an independent autopsy.

• Willie Jones Jr., found hanging, and Mississippi tried to bury the case under “suicide.”

• Taisa Fortune, found hanging in Jackson, and the state shipped her body straight to a woman who has a proven history of mishandling Black bodies and disappearing Black murders, Dr. Staci Turner, because that’s Mississippi’s playbook.

Different counties, different years, different circumstances — same damn script. Black child dies → “accident.” Black man dies → “suicide.” Black person dies in custody → “medical emergency.” Family demands answers → ignored. Community raises hell → dismissed. Evidence goes missing → “nothing suspicious.” Case closed → pattern protected.

Mississippi doesn’t investigate Black deaths; Mississippi shuts them down. Mississippi protects itself, not the truth. Otis Byrd wasn’t treated like a victim. He was treated like an inconvenience, just like the others.

What Communities Must Do Because Mississippi Sure as Hell Won’t

Mississippi counts on silence. Mississippi counts on exhaustion. Mississippi counts on people moving on. So the response has to be creative, loud, and communal; not just reactive.

• Embark on Public Memory Projects: Mississippi hates documentation. So build digital archives, community timelines, and public memorials naming every suspicious hanging the state tried to bury. Make the record undeniable.

• Pressure Federal Agencies Through Collective Action: One person emailing the DOJ gets ignored. Hundreds don’t. Thousands don’t. Coordinated complaint submissions force federal eyes back onto cases Mississippi tried to close.

• Use Art, Media, and Storytelling as Weapons: Murals, installations, short films, spoken word; Mississippi cannot sanitize what the community keeps alive. Turn Otis Byrd’s story into something Mississippi cannot erase. That’s the whole point of these articles. Mississippi cannot erase them.

• Fund Independent Forensic Reviews: Black families shouldn’t have to fight alone. Crowdfund independent autopsies and forensic pathologists for suspicious cases so Mississippi can’t control the narrative.

• Build Cross‑State Coalitions: Mississippi ain’t the only state with this pattern. Link with organizers in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas to expose the regional trend and shut down the “isolated incident” lie.

• Create Rapid Response Teams: When a Black person goes missing or is found under suspicious circumstances, communities should have a ready‑to‑move network: search teams, legal observers, media contacts, and forensic advocates.

• Publicly Track Every Case Mississippi Calls a Suicide: Make a public ledger. Make it impossible for Mississippi to hide the pattern. Document every name, every ruling, every contradiction.

Alright, y’all legit have no excuse not to take action. I’ve laid out action plan after action plan after action plan. If you ain’t involved, it’s because dead Black bodies do not bother you. So they the fuck are you even here?!

The Point Is Simple: Mississippi Has a Pattern; Otis Byrd Proves It

Otis Byrd’s death ain’t a fucking mystery. It’s a pattern. It’s a lineage. It’s a continuation of the same violence Mississippi has been producing for generations. I’ve been proving it article after article, case after case. Mississippi is an epicenter for Black death.

The conclusion never matched the data. It never does.

And the community’s job (our job) is to make sure Mississippi can’t keep pretending otherwise.

The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Support the work

Rest in Power, King

“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra power it takes to win.” — Muhammad Ali

Greatness doesn’t always walk in with a damn spotlight. Sometimes it shows up messy; right after life tries to snatch everything from you. That’s how Will Williams’ story cracked open. Ford Heights. Limited options. Thin guidance. A future that felt more like a rumor than a promise.

Getting kicked off the basketball team his senior year? That could’ve been the end. Folks could’ve stamped him as done. But nah. That was the plot twist, y’all. That was the moment the universe said, “Alright, let’s see what you’re really made of.”

And thank goodness one person refused to let him fall.

Coach Andrew Schmitt had been peeping Will’s potential for years; long before Will even believed in himself. He pushed. He insisted. He stayed on him until Will finally stepped onto that long jump runway. And baby, once he touched that sand? It was over. Within a month, Will became the Illinois State Runner-Up.

That was not just a medal, y’all.
That was a rebirth.
That was the moment the boy from Ford Heights realized he wasn’t just jumping; he was rising.

Long jump became his second chance, his purpose, the vehicle that would carry him far beyond the boundaries of the place that raised him.

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When the Universe Says “Stop Playing”

Greatness will whisper at you for years before it finally steps out and says, “Alright, let’s stop playing, you’re built for this.” That moment came for Will at Texas A&M, when he snatched his first NCAA National Championship. And listen… that wasn’t just a win. That was the universe clearing its damn throat.

That title didn’t give him confidence; it exposed the confidence he already had tucked inside him. It was the kind of moment that makes your whole life pause. The kind that makes you stand a little taller, breathe a little deeper, and say, “Oh, I AM really him.”

Because let’s be real: Black athletes don’t get handed confirmation. They earn it. They fight for it. They bleed for it. And when it finally shows up? It hits different. It hits in your chest. It hits in your bones. It hits in that place you’ve been protecting since you were a kid.

That championship told Will his dreams weren’t too big. They weren’t unrealistic. They weren’t “maybe one day.” They were possible, present, and waiting on him.

It was the shift from “maybe” to “watch me.”
From “I hope” to “I know.”
From potential to proof.

That moment didn’t just change his career, y’all. It changed his self‑perception. It snapped something into place. It made the boy from Ford Heights realize he wasn’t just competing with the best… he was the best. And once you know that? Once you feel that confirmation in your bones?

You stop chasing greatness.
You start walking in it.

The Man His Grandfather Made

Greatness doesn’t just come from wins; it comes from the people who shape you before the world even knows your name. For Will, that person was his grandfather. And when he passed, it didn’t break Will. It cracked him open. It rearranged him. It made him look at his life and say, “Alright… I gotta carry this legacy now.”

His grandfather taught him the kind of things you can’t learn from a coach or a damn playbook; leadership, humility, service. The stuff that builds character, not just medals. The stuff that makes you show up for people even when nobody’s watching.

That’s why coaching didn’t just become a job for Will; it became a calling. A lifeline. A way to honor the man who raised him into the man he’s becoming.

When Will pours into young athletes (from the six‑year‑old trying to figure out how to land without falling, to the twenty‑four‑year‑old chasing their own breakthrough), he ain’t just teaching technique. He’s passing down wisdom. He’s giving them the kind of guidance he didn’t always have.

And here’s the part that hits:
Every athlete he coaches teaches him something back.
Every lesson he gives comes full circle.
Every moment on that track sharpens him.

Success, for Will, ain’t just about what he achieves. It’s about what he helps others achieve. It’s about legacy. It’s about impact. It’s about becoming the Black man his grandfather made him to be.

The Village That Makes Him Fly

Let’s be clear: Black greatness is never running solo. It’s never “I did this by myself.” It’s communal. It’s collective. It’s the damn village behind the runway.

Will does not step onto that runway alone; not ever. He carries his grandfather’s spirit. He carries his mother’s strength. He carries his siblings, his nieces, his nephews. He carries every coach who poured into him, every teammate who pushed him, every mentor who refused to let him quit.

He carries Ford Heights (the whole damn town) every time he runs down that runway.

And he carries every young Black athlete watching him, trying to figure out if greatness is possible for them too. Will is proof that it is. Will is the representation our Black youth deserves; not the watered‑down version, but the real one. The one built from grit, community, and purpose.

This is why “for the people, by the people” ain’t just a cute phrase, y’all. It’s the truth of his journey. It’s the infrastructure. It’s the foundation. It’s the reminder that when Black community shows up for you, you don’t just rise; you fucking soar.

Will’s jumps ain’t just jumps.
They’re declarations.
They’re offerings.
They’re acknowledgments of every person who helped him get here.

The village raised him.
The village fuels him.
And the village will send him to the Olympics.

Greatness Ain’t Free

People love to cheer for Black greatness, but they rarely understand the damn bill that comes with it. Everybody sees the jump (the height, the distance, the celebration), but they don’t see the cost. They don’t see the grind behind the scenes. They don’t see the financial weight sitting on Will’s shoulders while he’s out here competing with the best in the world.

Recovery alone? That’s a whole damn budget, y’all. Weekly massages, chiropractic care, dry needling, and physical therapy (all the body work that keeps him from breaking down) run anywhere from $500 to $2,500 a month. And that’s just to keep the machine running.

Coaching, programming, and training? Add another $6,000 to $15,000 a year.
Travel? Baby, international competition ain’t cheap. Flights, hotels, rental cars, lodging; that’s $10,000 to $25,000 annually. Nutrition? $800 to $1,200 a month just to fuel the body that makes the jump possible.

And on top of all that? He still has everyday living expenses like the rest of us.

This is the part folks don’t see. This is the part corporations ignore. This is the part “Sponsored by the People” is stepping in to fix. Will has made seven consecutive Team USA international teams with no corporate sponsorship. No big brand backing him. No safety net. Just discipline, community, and a belief that Black greatness built from the ground up hits different.

This is what elite looks like when you’re doing it the hard way (the Black way), the community way.

The Moment Before the Boom

The Olympics ain’t just a meet; they’re a moment. A coliseum. A battlefield. A stage where the entire world watches you breathe.

Will knows that moment intimately; the silence before the storm. The runway stretching out in front of him. The cadence building. The rhythm tightening. The acceleration. The takeoff. And then that BOOM when he hits the sand.

And in his vision, the stadium erupts.
The announcer’s voice cracks through the noise:
“Will Williams… with a NEW WORLD RECORD!”

That’s the dream. But that ain’t the finish line. Because Will ain’t chasing a medal; he’s chasing a platform. He wants to use everything this sport gives him to pour back into Black communities, mentor young people, and become the person he needed growing up.

Gold is the goal.
Impact is the mission.
Legacy is the assignment.

When You Realize You Are the Brand

Let’s talk about it. Will is a professional Black athlete with no corporate sponsorship, and instead of folding, he flipped the whole damn narrative. His philosophy is simple and loud:

Your circumstances don’t determine your ceiling.
You don’t chase brands.
You become the brand.

You stay authentic.
You stay grounded.
You keep showing up.
You keep believing.
And your people (the right people) will find you.

Black success built on purpose lasts longer than Black success built on popularity. And Will’s entire career is proof that purpose wins every time. He ain’t waiting for validation. He ain’t waiting for permission. He’s building something bigger; something rooted in Black community, faith, and self-belief.

That’s brand.
That’s legacy.
That’s Black excellence without corporate approval.

We Build Black Champions Ourselves

Alright, y’all; this is where the village steps in.

Every donation to Journey to the Gold directly makes elite performance possible. Your support funds the recovery, coaching, nutrition, travel, equipment, and training that keep Will competitive at the highest level.

He has already proven he can stand among the world’s elite with limited resources. Imagine what becomes possible when community power meets world‑class talent.

This ain’t charity.
This ain’t pity.
This ain’t “helping an athlete.”

This is investment.
This is participation.
This is building a Black champion with your own damn hands.

“Sponsored by the People” means we ain’t waiting for corporations to recognize Black greatness. We’re recognizing it ourselves. We’re funding it ourselves. We’re pushing it to the Olympics ourselves.

This is what community power looks like in motion.

Black Greatness in Full Motion

Will Williams is a Black man from a small town outside Chicago, preparing to step onto the biggest stage in the world; not backed by corporations, but backed by the people.

Every person who chooses to believe in him becomes part of something larger:

A pursuit of World and Olympic gold.
A commitment to Black excellence.
A promise to give back.
A demonstration that purpose, perseverance, and community can carry a Black man all the way from Ford Heights to the Olympic Games.

This is Black Greatness in full motion. This is the village raising a king.
This is Journey to the Gold: Sponsored by the People.

If you believe in this journey (in this Black man, in this mission, in this moment), tap the link and help send Will to the Olympics. Your support is the difference.

Support Will Now

On July 26, 2021, Damien Cameron (a 29‑year‑old Black man living with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia) ended up face‑down, swollen, bloody, and barely breathing after two white Rankin County deputies chased him, tased him, wrestled him, and knelt on his neck and back. His mother, Monica Lee, watched her child say he couldn’t breathe while grown‑ass white men in badges pressed the life out of him.

The white deputies wrote a different story, of course. They always do.

Their reports claim Damien “swung” at Deputy Hunter Elward, ran, resisted, fought, fell, and somehow ended up unresponsive in the back of a patrol car. Convenient. Clean. Sanitized. And missing the part where witnesses, including Damien’s own grandfather, saw a deputy’s knee on his neck.

Mississippi doesn’t require body cameras, so there ain’t any footage. And don’t get it twisted, Mississippi choosing not to require body cameras is deliberate as hell. This is the same state where police helped violent white mobs beat, torture, and murder Black folks during Jim Crow. Mississippi has never been confused about how to protect white violence. They just updated the methods.

And the wildest part? On July 3, 2023, Hunter Elward tortured another Black man, Michael Jenkins (stuck a gun in that man’s mouth and pulled the damn trigger), and Mississippi STILL didn’t fire him for that. They didn’t fire him for kneeling on Damien. They didn’t fire him for lying in reports. They didn’t fire him for planting evidence. They didn’t fire him for covering up crimes.

Elward kept his badge as if nothing fucking happened (kept working, kept wearing that uniform) until the federal government dragged the truth into daylight. Mississippi didn’t remove him; the feds did. Mississippi was perfectly fine letting a white man who shot a Black man in the mouth stay on payroll.

That ain’t oversight.
That is fucking endorsement.

This state protects white violence like it’s fucking tradition. Because it is.

By the time Damien reached the medical examiner’s office, his face was swollen beyond recognition. Internal bleeding along his neck told the truth the deputies refused to write down. And yet Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Staci Turner stamped his death as “undetermined.” Not homicide. Not asphyxia. Not the truth. Three national forensic pathologists reviewed the evidence and said what Mississippi refused to say: Damien Cameron was killed. Full stop.

“There’s really nothing to be undetermined about,” Dr. Zhongxue Hua said.

But Mississippi has a long history of calling Black death “unclear” when the killer wears a badge.

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Rankin County: Where White Violence Ain’t an Accident; It’s a Damn Policy

What happened to Damien wasn’t an accident, and it damn sure wasn’t a one‑off. Rankin County has a documented pattern (a whole damn lineage) of white deputies brutalizing Black people and walking away untouched. Damien’s death sits inside a racist system that’s been running the same play for years.

Rankin County deputies have been tied to at least nine deaths since 2014. Nine Black men who never made it out of encounters with the same department. Nine Black families forced to swallow whatever lie the sheriff’s office printed on paper. Nine Black cases where Mississippi shrugged and called white violence “unclear,” “accidental,” or “undetermined.”

And here’s where the pattern snaps into focus: The Goon Squad. Five Rankin County deputies and one Richland police officer (all white) broke into the home of two Black men, tortured them for two hours, sexually assaulted them, and shot Michael Jenkins in the mouth. They planted drugs. They planted a gun. They destroyed security footage. They falsified reports. They acted like a white‑supremacist militia with badges.

And Mississippi didn’t uncover this. Mississippi didn’t stop this. Mississippi didn’t even fucking blink.

The truth only came out because the federal government stepped in, because Rankin County damn sure wasn’t going to hold its own people accountable. The same department that brutalized Damien was harboring a whole squad of violent white officers who treated Black bodies like targets.

This is not a broken system. This is a system doing exactly what it was built to do.

Rankin County has been operating like a generational enforcement arm of white violence; and Mississippi has been co‑signing it with silence, with “undetermined,” with “no further investigation,” with every bureaucratic trick designed to disappear Black pain. This is the pattern. This is the lineage. This is the violence Mississippi keeps pretending is “complicated.”

It ain’t complicated.
It’s intentional.
Wake the fuck up.

Mississippi: A State That Protects White Violence on Purpose

Mississippi didn’t just produce Rankin County; Rankin County is what Mississippi looks like when you stop pretending. This state has a long, unbroken lineage of disappearing Black suffering, protecting white violence, and calling it “procedure,” “policy,” or “undetermined.”

This is the same Mississippi where police helped violent white mobs beat, torture, and murder Black folks during Jim Crow. The same Mississippi that perfected lynching, perfected chain gangs, perfected “officer‑involved deaths,” perfected every fucking bureaucratic trick designed to make Black death look like a mystery.

Mississippi has never been confused about how to protect white violence.
They just modernized the tactics.

You see it in Damien’s case.
You see it in the Goon Squad.
You see it in every “undetermined” stamped on a Black body.

Mississippi doesn’t require body cameras; not because they “can’t afford it,” not because they “haven’t implemented it yet,” but because no footage means no accountability. Darkness protects the white people doing the damn harm. Mississippi knows exactly what it’s doing when it chooses silence over documentation. And Damien’s death sits in the same lineage as:

• Nolan Xavier Wells: “accidental drowning,” throat withheld from independent autopsy.

• Demartravion ‘Trey’ Reed: found hanging, evidence that didn’t fit the suicide ruling.

• Channon Wilson: 13 years old, declared “accidental drowning” without an autopsy, embalmed without consent.

Different counties. Different circumstances. Same outcome: Black families told not to ask questions.

Mississippi doesn’t just mishandle Black death; it manufactures confusion around it. It weaponizes ambiguity. It uses “undetermined” the way past generations used “no foul play suspected.” It is the same violence, dressed in paperwork. And when you zoom out, the pattern is unmistakable: Mississippi protects white violence like it’s tradition. Because it is.

This is the soil Damien died in.
This is the system that let the Goon Squad thrive.
This is the state that keeps choosing silence over justice, confusion over truth, and white protection over Black life.

Mississippi did not fail Damien.
Mississippi performed exactly as designed.

Dr. Staci Turner: Mississippi’s Chief Architect of Disappearing Black Death

Let me be real fucking clear: this ain’t the first time I’ve talked about Dr. Staci Turner, and it damn sure won’t be the last. Every time Mississippi tries to bury a Black death under paperwork, her name pops up like it’s part of the ritual. She ain’t a mistake, ain’t an outlier, ain’t some “neutral professional.” She is a gatekeeper in a system built to disappear us.

When Damien’s body reached Staci’s office, his face was swollen beyond recognition. His neck showed internal bleeding. His body carried every sign of a violent restraint; the kind the DOJ condemns, the kind witnesses said those white deputies used, the kind that keeps killing Black people over and over again.

And Staci Turner looked at all that and stamped his death “undetermined.”

Not homicide.
Not asphyxia.
Not the truth.

She claimed she “lacked access to information,” but somehow had enough information to avoid calling it what three national forensic pathologists later said it clearly was: a homicide. “There’s really nothing to be undetermined about,” Dr. Zhongxue Hua said. And he’s right, unless your job ain’t truth. Unless your job is protecting white supremacist violence. Unless your job is making sure Mississippi’s white violence stays clean on paper.

Because let’s stop pretending: Staci Turner has a pattern. I’ve talked about her before. I’ll talk about her again. She keeps showing up in cases where Black families are fighting for answers, and Mississippi is fighting to hide them. “Undetermined” is her favorite trick, the bureaucratic version of “no foul play suspected.” It’s how Mississippi launders police violence. It’s how they disappear accountability. It’s how they turn Black homicide into a puzzle instead of a crime scene.

And people across the country are done.

There is a Change.org petition demanding the revocation of her medical license, and let’s be clear: my activism is the reason that petition is taking off. My platform. My voice. My refusal to shut the hell up about this woman. I’m the one dragging her into the light, and folks are responding because they’re tired of watching her turn Black death into administrative fog. Folks are responding because I am the Black liberator these white supremacists are terrified of.

Because people ain’t just angry; they’re fucking exhausted.
Exhausted by the same damn pattern.
Exhausted by the same damn cover‑ups.
Exhausted by watching this white woman do the same harm over and over again.

Tired of watching her shield law enforcement.
Tired of watching her rulings stall lawsuits.
Tired of watching her shut down grand juries.
Tired of watching her protect violent white officers.

Mississippi didn’t just let the deputies kill Damien. Mississippi let Staci Turner bury the evidence.

This is the system, y’all. This is the machinery. This is the white violence dressed up as “procedure”, the exact shit I’ve been calling out for years. And trust: I ain’t done talking about her. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever; not as long as she keeps helping Mississippi disappear Black truth.

SIGN THE PETITION. NOW.

Mississippi Ain’t Confused; It Chooses White Violence Every Time

Mississippi thinks they are slick, acting like these are “isolated incidents,” like Damien’s death was a tragic misunderstanding, like the Goon Squad was some shocking anomaly, like Staci Turner just “needed more information.” But when you line the facts up, the pattern is loud as hell.

Mississippi keeps choosing white violence, then hiding behind paperwork. Keeps choosing white protection, then calling it “procedure.” Keeps choosing white silence, then pretending the truth is “unclear.” Damien’s death wasn’t a glitch. The Goon Squad wasn’t a surprise. Staci Turner wasn’t an accident.

They are all symptoms of the same white‑supremacist design: a system built to protect white violence and disappear Black pain.

Mississippi has spent generations perfecting this shit. Jim Crow wasn’t just a period; it was a damn blueprint. And the blueprint is still being followed. Closely. You see it in the white deputies who knelt on Damien. You see it in the Goon Squad torturing Jenkins. You see it in Staci Turner laundering homicide into “undetermined.” You see it in every Black family forced to fight the state for basic truth.

Mississippi keeps telling on itself. Every case. Every cover‑up. Every “undetermined.” Every missing body cam. Every Black autopsy that reads like a defense brief for law enforcement.

And now the country is watching, because I made them look. Because I refused to let Mississippi bury Damien. Because I refused to let Staci Turner hide behind her title. Because I refused to let Rankin County pretend this was anything but white supremacist violence with a badge.

This is the system I’m exposing.
This is the machinery I’m dismantling.
This is the violence I’m dragging into the light.

And Mississippi can’t hide from it anymore.

Mississippi Has Avoided Accountability Long Enough

Mississippi keeps pretending accountability is complicated, like they need a task force, a committee, a study, a prayer circle, anything to avoid doing the one thing they’ve never done: tell the damn truth. But the truth is simple. They don’t want accountability because accountability threatens the white violence they’ve been protecting for generations. The white violence that makes their mouths salivate.

And I’m done letting them hide behind that.

Mississippi needs cops with body cameras; real ones, mandatory ones, cameras that stay on, cameras they can’t “accidentally” switch off when they’re choking out a Black person. Cameras that make it impossible for them to lie the way they lied about Damien. Cameras that make it impossible for Staci Turner to pretend she “lacked information.”

But cameras alone won’t fix a damn thing if Mississippi is still allowed to investigate itself. We’ve seen what that looks like. It looks like Damien. It looks like the Goon Squad. It looks like “undetermined” stamped on Black homicide like it’s a default setting.

Mississippi needs independent oversight, and not the fake kind where Mississippi insiders investigate Mississippi insiders. I’m talking about a diverse, out‑of‑state review team. People who don’t owe sheriffs favors. People who don’t have cousins on the force. People who don’t have church ties to the medical examiner’s office. People who don’t have any reason to protect the white‑supremacist machinery that keeps disappearing Black death.

A team that can look at cases like Damien’s and call them what they are, without worrying about who they’re going to piss off at the next stale ass house party.

Because Mississippi has proven, over and over again, that it cannot investigate itself. It cannot police itself. It cannot tell the truth about its own violence. And that’s exactly why my activism is hitting the way it is. Why the petition is taking off. Why people across the country are paying attention. Because I’m naming the demands Mississippi refuses to face, and I ain’t softening a single goddamn syllable.

Mississippi has had centuries to get this right.
They chose violence instead.
So now I’m choosing pressure.

And trust; I’m not done.

The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Support the work

Rest In Power, King

DISCLAIMER

My anti‑racism articles are available only to my paid subscribers. This is intentional. As a Black woman doing this work, people will take, take, take from me if I don’t set hard boundaries. White folks especially will steal language, steal frameworks, and steal labor while pretending they are “sharing resources.” I do not work for free for white people, and I do not let my intellectual property get lifted and repackaged. I charge because theft is real, exploitation is real, and protecting my work is survival. Keep this work inside our community. Do not share my content with people who have not invested in it. Do not use my material to teach your own anti‑racism sessions or to build your own “curriculum.” If you want to leverage my work beyond your personal growth, ask me. And yes, there will be a fee.

White people, y’all love to keep pretending racism is loud: slurs, extremists, tiki torches, the obvious shit. But the part that keeps killing us ain’t loud at all. It’s fucking quiet. It’s practiced. It’s cultural. It’s the white avoidance you keep mistaking for neutrality, reflection, or “not wanting to get it wrong.”

White avoidance is how white America disappears Black America without ever raising its voice. White avoidance is how a Black person ends up dead under circumstances that don’t add up, and white people still manage to shrug, nod, and move on. White avoidance is how the state stamps “suicide” on a case before the evidence is even collected. White avoidance is how white people convince themselves they’re “listening” while Black families are begging for answers. White avoidance is how whiteness stays innocent while Black people stay dead.

I’ve been showing you case after case; Black bodies found hanging, Black bodies found drowned, Black bodies found under conditions that contradict the official story, and every single one of them has the same white signature: avoidance first, accountability never.

This week, I’m naming the mechanism directly.

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White Avoidance Is How Black People Die

White people, y’all love to frame your silence as thoughtfulness, your hesitation as care, your quiet as respect. Y’all are full of shit. That is you acting like your avoidance is a damn virtue. Y’all love making virtue out of nothing.

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And now the body is being transported to the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office. Yes, the same office that ignored the physical evidence on Trey Reed and stamped his death a suicide with “no foul play suspected.” The same office that keeps scrubbing the truth out of these cases. The same office run by Dr. Staci Turner, who has a documented pattern of ruling Black death as an accident, suicide, or “undetermined” no matter the trauma, no matter the contradictions, no matter the damn history. Dr. Staci Turner is a racist bitch who needs to be fired and investigated.

Mississippi is already running the next step in its cover‑up script.

I will keep y’all informed as more information is released. I am watching this case closely.

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Dr. Staci Turner Is Mississippi’s Cover‑Up Machine

Let’s talk about that racist bitch Dr. Staci Turner, because Mississippi keeps pretending she’s neutral and she ain’t. She is the state’s chief medical examiner, the person who decides what gets called homicide, what gets called accident, and what gets erased.

And under her “leadership”, Black families keep getting handed rulings that make no damn sense.

• This is the same office that called Trey Reed’s hanging a suicide and ignored physical evidence.

• The same office that called Damien Cameron’s death “undetermined” even though his autopsy showed internal bleeding in the neck, facial trauma, and injuries consistent with compression; injuries three independent forensic pathologists later said were homicide.

• The same office that withheld Nolan Wells’ throat from the independent autopsy, making sure the family couldn’t challenge their story.

• The same office that keeps producing rulings that conveniently protect sheriffs, deputies, and white suspects, while ignoring all of the evidence.

Staci did not create Mississippi’s racial‑terror machinery, but she is running it.
She is the one stamping the paperwork.
She is the one erasing the evidence.
She is the one giving Mississippi the language it needs to disappear Black people without calling it what it is.

And now she is the one who will determine the cause of death for this unidentified Black woman found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home.

Mississippi knows exactly what it’s doing.

Mississippi’s Disappearance Machine

This ain’t new. This ain’t shocking. This ain’t “developing.” This is Mississippi doing what Mississippi has always fucking done; disappearing Black people and expecting us to swallow whatever bullshit explanation they hand out.

I’ve been talking about this for months.
Trey Reed.
Roy Veal.
And now an unidentified Black woman found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in Jackson.

Mississippi keeps running the same tired play: maybe suicide, maybe not, investigation ongoing. They say it like we have not seen this exact fucking script before. They say it like we are supposed to pretend this ain’t a pattern of erasure.

Since 2000, at least nine Black people across Mississippi have been found hanging from trees, and every single one was ruled a suicide. Every one. No matter the location. No matter the contradictions. No matter the damn history.

And here is what we already know because I have been saying it, loudly:

Black people do not die by suicide in public spaces at these rates.
Black people do not hang themselves from trees behind vacant houses.
Black people do not fit the story Mississippi keeps trying to force‑feed us.

The numbers do not line up. The history does.
The data does not match. The lineage does.

Y’all, this ain’t a damn mystery. This is Mississippi’s DNA. This is continuation. Mississippi keeps producing these cases because it has never fucking stopped.

Mississippi Is Still Running Ida B. Wells’ Playbook

Mississippi ain’t “struggling” with these cases. Mississippi is repeating itself. This state has a lineage, y’all; a documented, century‑long practice of disappearing Black people and laundering the violence through official language.

Ida B. Wells wrote about this exact damn playbook. She tracked how Mississippi handled Black death: the rushed conclusions, the sanitized statements, the refusal to investigate, the insistence that the community accepts whatever story the racist‑ass white state handed down. She taught us that lynching was not just the act; it was the cover‑up, the denial, the performance of innocence.

And here we are again.

A Black woman found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home.
A state that immediately reaches for “maybe suicide, maybe not.”
A community forced to watch Mississippi pretend it does not know its own damn history.

Ida B. Wells told us to pay attention to the pattern, not the press release.
Ida B. Wells told us to trust the community’s memory, not the sheriff’s statement.
Ida B. Wells told us that when Mississippi says “no foul play,” you look harder.

Her work ain’t a relic. It is a mirror. And Mississippi keeps stepping into it.

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Mississippi Is Still Targeting Ida B. Wells’ Bloodline

Nolan Wells was an 18‑year‑old Black boy murdered in Mississippi by his white “friends” on July 4, 2026.

They are still free.
Still walking around.
Still raising money.
Still untouched by the racist ass state.

And here’s the part Mississippi does not want you to fucking acknowledge:

Nolan Wells is a descendant of Ida B. Wells.

The same Mississippi that ignored Ida B. Wells’ warnings is now ignoring the murder of her own descendant. Let that hit you in the chest. Let it remind you exactly who the fuck we are dealing with.

The same Mississippi that perfected the lynching playbook is still running it, just with new language, new excuses, and the same damn outcome for Black families. This is the lineage Mississippi refuses to break.

Mississippi Cannot Investigate What It Keeps Creating

Let’s be clear: Mississippi has no fucking business investigating these deaths. None. This is the same state that built its entire identity on racial terror; not metaphorically, not symbolically, but literally. Mississippi did not just participate in lynching; Mississippi engineered it. Mississippi protected it. Mississippi normalized it through sheriffs, coroners, judges, and newspapers that called Black death “order.”

Remember, y’all:
This is the state that led the nation in lynchings.
The state where white mobs posed for photos under Black bodies.
The state where coroners stamped lynchings as “natural causes.”
The state where white sheriffs handed Black people over to mobs and called it “justice.”
The state that chased Ida B. Wells out for telling the truth about its violence.

Mississippi has never dismantled that machinery, y’all. It just learned to hide it behind press conferences.

So no, Mississippi cannot investigate itself. A state with this lineage cannot be trusted to determine what happened to a Black person. A state that keeps producing these cases cannot be allowed to rule on them. Period.

And here’s the part that needs to be fucking highlighted: Since 2000, Mississippi has ruled NINE Black people found hanging from trees as suicides. Across the Deep South, the total reported number is SEVENTY. Seventy Black people found hanging, seventy, and the states keep calling it suicide.

That is a racist system doing exactly what it was built to do.

And look at the pattern right now: A Black woman found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home. A Black boy, Nolan Wells, murdered by his white “friends,” who are still free and raising money. A state that keeps pretending it does not recognize its own damn lineage.

We need these cases out of Mississippi’s hands, y’all. We need independent investigators. We need oversight that does not come from the same soil that produced the violence. Because every time Mississippi touches one of these cases, the truth gets smaller. And every time the community speaks up, the state pretends it’s confused.

If white America is disappearing Black people, Mississippi is the fucking blueprint. And until these cases are removed from the state’s control, the pattern will continue, and Mississippi will keep telling us to believe what we already know is a lie.

We Protect Us

Mississippi has made it clear it will not protect us. So we protect each other.

If you’re Black in Mississippi, move like the state is watching. Because it is. Stay in community. Stay accounted for. Let somebody know where you’re going and when you’re home. Keep your phone charged. Keep your location on for someone you trust. Travel with people when you can. Do not let this state isolate you. Mississippi has earned none of our trust.

If something feels off, tell your people; not the state. If someone goes missing, raise hell immediately. Do not wait for Mississippi to “open an investigation.” They investigate Black death like it’s a fucking inconvenience. If you get pulled into a police interaction, call someone and put them on speaker. Let them hear everything. Let them record everything. Mississippi’s silence has never protected us.

And if you are outside Mississippi, don’t treat this like distant news. Check on your people. Share the cases. Boost the families. Make sure the names stay loud. Make sure the state does not t get the quiet it needs to disappear another Black person.

Because Mississippi has a lineage of disappearing Black people.
We have a lineage of refusing to let them.

And when Mississippi tries to hand us another “no foul play” ruling, we reject it; loudly, publicly, collectively. We refuse to let the state write the narrative for us. The only reason these cases ever get traction is that we refuse to shut up about them.

And I’ll keep covering every damn update until the truth comes out, because Mississippi sure as hell ain’t going to give it to us.

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Black Loving‑Kindness: Softness Without Surrender

Trigger Warning: This piece discusses Yo‑Yo Lubrin’s death, the contradictions at the scene, and the state’s rush to call it a suicide. It includes details that may be triggering, especially for Black readers who have seen this pattern before.

On September 28, 2023, Orlando police walked into a backyard, saw a Black woman hanging from a tree, and decided the entire damn narrative before touching a single piece of evidence. (If this still surprises you, you have not been paying attention to what I’ve been putting out.) Thirty‑one‑year‑old Yolna “Yo‑Yo” Lubrin was already gone when they arrived, but instead of asking how or why, they rushed to label it suicide. The department did not slow down long enough to consider anything outside their default “Black person hanging = suicide” script.

Not because the evidence pointed there (it never does), but because white supremacy has taught them they can. Because American law enforcement was literally built to track, capture, and control Black people. The earliest policing structures in this country were slave patrols, and everything that came after carried that same damn logic forward: surveillance, containment, and punishment of Black bodies. Jim Crow did not invent that violence; it just formalized it, and that shit ain’t never dissipated.

So when a Black woman is found dead, the system does what it was designed to do: dismiss, deflect, and move on.

No real investigation.
No pause to assess contradictions.
No curiosity about how a Black woman ends up hanging in a stranger’s backyard at sunrise.

Just a racist, negligent‑ass conclusion; the kind Black families have been forced to swallow for decades while racist policing structures protect themselves and the violence they not only enable but encourage.

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The Scene That Should’ve Stopped the Suicide Narrative

A video taken before police even bothered to secure the damn area showed Yo‑Yo’s body in a position that does not align with suicide. Her chest was exposed. Her hand could reach the wall. Her posture suggested she could stand, much like Juliana Nzita.

Y’all, these ain’t small details. These are blaring red flags; the kind that should’ve stopped the investigation in its damn tracks and pivoted it straight into a homicide investigation. But that would require white effort, white empathy, white curiosity, and a white willingness to treat a Black woman’s death like it matters. And we all know the American policing system ain’t ever gonna extend that to us.

Another video showed her car torn apart: every door open, belongings thrown everywhere, windshield smashed. Y’all, that ain’t the scene of someone quietly preparing to take their own life. That is the scene of chaos, struggle, and violence. How the fuck can they ignore this?!

The men who filmed it did not bother to call 911.
They did not bother to speak to police.
They simply went to work while a Black woman hung in their backyard. And police accepted that silence without question.

This is what happens when racist white investigators walk in with a conclusion already in hand: evidence becomes optional. And when the system was built from slave‑patrol logic (surveillance, control, and dismissal of Black life), optional becomes the damn standard.

This Ain’t New. This Is the Damn Pattern.

I have proven to you, in every case I’ve written, that they ain’t an isolated failure. It is a pattern; a repeated, predictable, historically backed pattern. The same system that failed Titi Gulley before Yolna, and failed Tonea Miller after her, didn’t miss a fucking beat. It swallowed Yolna’s name whole like it was nothing.

Y’all, this is how the system moves: Black women die under suspicious circumstances, and the investigation collapses before it even begins. The conclusion gets written first. The evidence gets ignored second. And the family gets told to accept whatever story racist ass law enforcement finds most convenient.

Yolna’s case is following the same fucking script:
✔️Quick ruling.
✔️Shallow investigation.
✔️Evidence at the scene contradicting the “cause of death.”
✔️A racist system that treats Black women’s deaths as nuisances instead of mysteries worth solving.

Yolna did not just fall into a tragedy, y’all. She fell into the white supremacist blueprint; the same one that has shaped how this country responds to Black death since 1619.

The Life They Tried to Erase

Yo‑Yo was not disposable. She was not invisible. She was not the caricature police narratives try to flatten Black women into.

She was brilliant, loving, and deeply rooted in her family. She cared for her disabled mother. She adored her nieces and nephews. She believed in unity and community. She was part of the LGBTQ community and carried herself with a heart that extended beyond her own circle.

She deserved a real investigation.
She deserved a system that did not treat her death as an inconvenience.
She deserved the same urgency, thoroughness, and respect routinely given to white victims.

Her life was full. Her death was suspicious. Her story deserves truth.

The Silence They Count On

As of August 3, 2026, the family still has no answers. No timeline. No accountability. No transparency.

Just silence; the kind white institutions rely on when they hope a case will fade, when they hope the community will get tired, when they hope the family will stop asking questions.

But silence ain’t closure. Silence is strategy. Silence is how these cases disappear. And silence is exactly why we keep talking. Because when the system goes quiet, we get loud.

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The Data That Breaks Their Story

Public suicides are rare. Fewer than 10% of suicides in the U.S. occur in public or semi‑public spaces.
Source: CDC National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), 2023.

Hanging from a tree is extremely uncommon. Among suicide deaths by hanging, the vast majority happen indoors: closets, rafters, door frames. Outdoor tree hangings make up well under 5% of hanging suicides.
Source: NVDRS method‑location cross‑tab analyses; American Journal of Public Health, 2021.

Black Americans are underrepresented in suicide by hanging in public spaces. Black people account for less than 10% of suicide deaths by hanging nationwide, and an even smaller percentage of outdoor hangings.
Source: CDC WISQARS, 2022; NVDRS demographic‑method data.

Black suicide deaths overwhelmingly occur in private spaces. NVDRS data shows Black Americans are significantly less likely to die by suicide in public or semi‑public locations compared to other groups.
Source: NVDRS location‑of‑injury tables, 2023.

Mental illness ≠ suicide. More than 90% of people living with depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, or anxiety do not die by suicide.
Source: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 2023.

The data does not align with the police investigations. Period.

Take Action (and no, not with the raggedy ass police department)

If you want answers, you do not beg the same institution that ignored the evidence. You apply pressure where it actually lands: the offices that oversee them, fund them, and can force their hand.

• 407‑836‑9400 — Medical Examiner
  This office determines the official cause of death. Tell them the scene contradicts suicide and demand an updated ruling and timeline.

• 407‑246‑2221 — Orlando Mayor’s Office
  The mayor can push for independent review. Tell them the investigation was negligent and you want external oversight.

• 407‑836‑7350 — Orange County Commissioners
  They control budgets and oversight committees. Tell them you expect a public inquiry into OPD’s handling of Yolna’s case.

• 850‑410‑7000 — FDLE (State-Level Review)
  FDLE can step in when local investigations fail. Tell them the contradictions and witness reports were ignored and request a state review.

• 850‑224‑3745 — NAACP Florida
  Civil rights advocates who can escalate this. Tell them you want support pushing for an independent investigation.

• 786‑363‑2700 — ACLU of Florida
  They track systemic negligence. Tell them this case fits a pattern of dismissing Black women’s deaths and needs legal attention.

These are the pressure points. Use them.

The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Support the work

Rest in Power, Queen

DISCLAIMER

My anti‑racism articles are available only to my paid subscribers. This is intentional. As a Black woman doing this work, people will take, take, take from me if I don’t set hard boundaries. White folks especially will steal language, steal frameworks, and steal labor while pretending they are “sharing resources.” I do not work for free for white people, and I do not let my intellectual property get lifted and repackaged. I charge because theft is real, exploitation is real, and protecting my work is survival. Keep this work inside our community. Do not share my content with people who have not invested in it. Do not use my material to teach your own anti‑racism sessions or to build your own “curriculum.” If you want to leverage my work beyond your personal growth, ask me. And yes, there will be a fee.

“White people, a Black woman is talking, sit down and listen.” Some of y’all have turned that sentence into a permission slip to disappear. You hear “sit down and listen” and treat it like a fucking hall pass to bow out of the work, retreat into your journals, and congratulate yourselves for “not taking up space.” That ain’t what I said. That ain’t what I meant. And the way you keep misinterpreting it is the clearest evidence of how deeply your white urge to protect whiteness still runs.

When I say, “White people, a Black woman is talking, sit down and listen,” I am naming a very specific moment: the moment your body reacts before your clarity does. The moment your mouth opens to correct, soften, redirect, contextualize, or rescue whiteness from discomfort. The moment you feel compelled to insert your white ass into a conversation that ain’t about you but absolutely requires your accountability.

“Sit down and listen” ain’t a damn invitation to silence. It is a command to resist your white reflex to center yourself. It is a disruption of your white instinct to protect whiteness. It is a boundary around the space Black women carve out so we can speak without your annoying ass interference. But it ain’t a permission slip to hide in the corner reading Black people’s posts, patting yourself on the back, while upholding the same white supremacy you claim to be dismantling.

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Note from Jackie: Everything we know about Titi Gulley’s gender expression comes from existing reporting and community accounts. Those sources say her family knew her as a cisgender gay man named Otis who sometimes dressed in drag and used he/him pronouns. Her friends and the people who loved her in the unhoused community knew her differently: as Titi, a woman who used she/her pronouns and presented that way most of the time. Because she’s no longer here to tell me how she wanted to be named in this story, I’m using she/her. That reflects how she showed up publicly and how her community recognized her.

On May 27, 2019, Titi Gulley, a Black transgender woman, was found hanging from a tree in Portland, Oregon. Police ruled it a suicide almost immediately, without a real investigation and without listening to the people who actually knew her. Titi was Black, queer, and unhoused; the combination that guarantees slave patrol indifference. When you live at the intersection of identities the state already treats as disposable, your death becomes something they rush to categorize instead of something they work to understand.

Titi was not disconnected. She was not spiraling. She was in constant contact with her mother and siblings until the day she was found dead. Her family has been clear from the beginning: she was not suicidal. They have repeated it, insisted on it, presented evidence, begged the Portland Police Bureau to take it seriously.

PPD has been unreceptive to their calls, so we will make them receptive to ours.

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The Suicide Shortcut

Y’all, Titi’s case ain’t an outlier. It fits the same tired pattern I have been reporting on: Black people found dead under suspicious circumstances, families saying this does not add up, and the slave patrol defaulting to suicide anyway. It is a fucking script. It is a fucking shortcut. It is how they dodge accountability, dodge investigation, and dodge admitting that violence against Black people (especially Black trans people) ain’t fucking random. It is patterned, predictable, and upheld by white institutions that do not see us as worth the work.

Remember, when the same narrative repeats across different cities, different victims, and different years, it stops being coincidence. It becomes a pattern of institutional failure. And that failure is shaped by anti‑Blackness, transphobia, and the belief that our deaths don’t require answers.

I use the word “transphobia” here article because it is the term people recognize, but let’s be crystal fucking clear: it’s the wrong word. These people ain’t scared of trans folks. They are fucking bigots. The violence Black trans people face ain’t about fear; it’s about hatred, anti‑Blackness, and a racist ass system that treats our lives like they’re optional. “Phobia” makes it sound like an emotional reaction instead of a deliberate choice to harm us. I’m calling that out here so the language does not let them off the hook.

The Reality Black Trans People Are Forced to Survive

The numbers make the pattern undeniable. Black transgender women face some of the highest rates of fatal violence in the LGBTQ+ community. In multiple national reports from the Human Rights Campaign, Black trans women routinely make up over 50% of all known trans homicide victims in the United States, despite being less than 10% of the trans population. In some years, that number has climbed even higher, up to 70% of reported trans homicides, showing just how concentrated this violence is.

The broader picture is just as brutal. Surveys from the National Center for Transgender Equality show that nearly 1 in 2 Black trans people have experienced homelessness, and over 60% report being mistreated or harassed by the slave patrol. Black trans people also report significantly higher rates of violent victimization, including assault, compared to white trans people. These are the conditions that shape whether violence gets investigated, whether families get listened to, and whether justice is even considered possible.

When you combine anti‑Blackness, transphobia, and poverty, you get a system that treats Black trans life as optional and Black trans death as unremarkable. That is the context in which Titi lived, y’all. That is the context her death was processed through. And that is the context we have to name if we want white people to understand why the slave patrol’s narrative cannot be taken at face value.

Given this data, given this pattern, the only logical path forward is to investigate deaths like Titi’s as homicides first.

She Was Someone

Titi was well known in the unhoused community; cheery, helpful, loving, someone who showed up for others even as they navigated her own instability.

She had a name.
She had people who loved her.
She had a life that mattered.

And she deserved an investigation that reflected that.

Titi was not worthless.
Titi was not subhuman.
Titi was a Black trans woman whose life deserved care, and whose death deserved answers.

Refusing the State’s Version

For Black trans people, erasure is deliberate, and it is structural. When the slave patrol rushes to declare suicide, when media coverage is thin or nonexistent, when families are dismissed, the result is the same: the victim disappears from public memory. That disappearance protects the racist institutions, not Black communities. Remembering Titi ain’t just about grief. It is about refusing to let the white state’s version of events become the only version.

Black people deserve justice; real justice, not the white watered‑down version that shows up only when the victim fits a narrative the white state is comfortable with. The patterns we keep seeing ain’t random. They are the product of systems that treat Black death as an inconvenience, not an alarm. When Black trans people are overrepresented in homicide statistics, when Black families repeatedly say “this was not suicide,” when police departments keep defaulting to the same conclusion anyway, that is a white supremacy-entrenched system doing exactly what it was built to do.

Y’all, these patterns point to a truth law enforcement refuses to name: the current investigative infrastructure is not designed to protect Black people. It is designed to protect itself. And as long as suicide remains the shortcut (the easy out, the narrative that shuts the door), Black deaths will continue to be processed through racism instead of evidence.

We need a new infrastructure. Period. One where data, not bias, determines how cases begin. One where deaths like Titi’s are investigated as homicides first, because the numbers demand it. One where Black families are treated as credible witnesses to their own loved ones’ lives. One where Black trans people are not erased before the investigation even starts.

For Titi, and for every Black trans person whose death has been rushed into silence, forgetting ain’t an option. You hear me? The only path forward, the only path that honors the truth, is building systems that investigate Black deaths with the seriousness they deserve, not the racism they have been handed.

Pressure Is the Point

If you want to honor Titi, you have to do more than remember her; you have to pressure the systems that failed her. In national reports, families of trans homicide victims say police misgendered or dismissed evidence in over 85% of cases, and Black trans victims are the ones most likely to have their cases go cold. In some cities, over 60% of cases involving Black trans victims remain unsolved. Y’all, that is a pattern!

Contact elected officials in Portland and demand a full, independent review of Titi’s case. Ask them why families of Black trans victims are ignored. Ask them if they reviewed the evidence the family provided them. Ask them why suicide is treated as a default instead of a conclusion reached through evidence. Public pressure works, y’all! In cities where communities forced case reviews, about one in four stalled cases were reopened. That is the power of refusing silence.

If you want accountability, start with the people who can actually move the needle. The Independent Police Review (IPR) (+1 503‑823‑1125) can take complaints about investigative failures. The Portland Police Bureau’s central command (+1 503‑823‑3333) and North Precinct (+1 503‑823‑5700) can be pressured directly. These offices have the power to reopen cases, re‑evaluate evidence, and respond to public scrutiny; and historically, they only act when communities refuse to stay quiet.

Print flyers with Titi’s name, her photo, and her story. Yes, even if you do not live in Portland, Oregon. Share them in your community. Put her face where people can see it. Black victims receive up to four times less media coverage than white victims, and that lack of visibility shapes whether officials act. Awareness is not a substitute for justice, but it is a tool for building pressure, and pressure is the only thing white institutions respond to.

Justice for Black people does not happen because people hope and “pray” for it. It happens because people demand it; loudly, repeatedly, and backed by data that makes their excuses impossible!

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The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Rest in Power, Queen

In Jim Crow Florida, a white woman’s accusation was not just a claim; it was a command. It did not matter that her story was inconsistent. It did not matter that her bruises came from a white lover she needed to hide. What mattered was that she, a white woman, said “a Black man did it,” and whiteness treated that shit as gospel.

Fannie Taylor’s accusation was the match, but the gasoline was everything white people had been carrying for generations: the white entitlement that told them they had the right to invade a Black town; the white rage that told them violence was a legitimate response to their own white discomfort; the certainty that their feelings were evidence, their fear was fact, and their violence was justified. White men did not gather because they believed that bitch. They gathered because they wanted to. Fannie’s lie simply gave them the cover, the moral alibi, to do what they already felt entitled to do.

Rosewood burned because whiteness was waiting for an excuse, and a white woman’s tears have always been treated as the perfect one.

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White Womanhood as the Trigger

On January 1, 1923, Fannie Taylor claimed a Black man had assaulted her. No proof. No suspect. No pause. Her husband and neighbors accepted her story instantly, because whiteness has never required evidence when a white woman points at a Black man.

Her lie was not new. White women have used Black men as shields for their own shame for centuries. But in the Jim Crow South, their tears were not just emotional displays; they were state‑sanctioned triggers for deadly racial violence.

The Mob: The Ritual of White Terror

Within hours, white men in Sumner armed themselves and formed posses; not because they were seeking justice, but because they were eager for violence. They moved as a coordinated force, crossing into Rosewood with guns, dogs, and the confidence of people who knew the law would never touch them, much like today. They were not investigating a crime. They were performing a ritual: white men asserting dominance through racial terror.

These bloodthirsty white men stormed into a quiet, predominantly Black town demanding a suspect who did not exist.

They kicked down doors.
They dragged Black men from their homes.
They interrogated families at gunpoint.
They ransacked houses looking for anything they could twist into “evidence.”

Y’all, they were not looking for truth; they were looking for a target.

Sam Carter became one of the first. Sam was a respected Black craftsman; a man known for his skill, his integrity, and his standing in the community. None of that mattered. White men seized him, beat him, and tortured him, forcing him to lead them through the woods in search of the imaginary attacker. Carter tried to survive. He tried to reason. He tried to navigate the impossible position white violence put him in. But when he could not produce a man who didn’t exist, they lynched him.

They left his body by the road as a message: whiteness had decided that Black life was disposable, and Rosewood was going to pay for a lie they already knew was a lie.

The mob did not stop with Carter. They continued moving through Rosewood, firing into homes, terrorizing Black families, and escalating their white violence with every fucking hour. Y’all, these men were not responding to Fannie Taylor. They were not protecting her. They were not even pretending to care about her story anymore. They were doing what white mobs have always done when given even the thinnest excuse: exercising the white violence they already believed they were owed.

Understand that this was not about justice. It was not about that lying bitch Fannie Taylor. It was about white men grabbing her lie and treating it like a license (a socially accepted, legally protected license) to unleash the brutality they had been carrying around long before January 1, 1923. White men did not need proof. They needed an excuse. And whiteness always makes sure they have one.

The Mob: White Supremacy Doing What It Was Built to Do

Over the next several days, the violent white mob grew into hundreds. They brought guns, gasoline, and dynamite. They burned Rosewood to the ground. They murdered Black residents who tried to flee. They hunted survivors through the swamps. Entire families hid for days without food, terrified that any sound would give them away.

White officials did nothing.
White newspapers minimized the violence.
White residents protected the attackers.

And even after that bitches story fell apart, the white mob did not stop. Because the lie was never the damn point. The lie was the permission.

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White Womanhood as the Trigger

Rosewood sits in the same lineage as Emmett Till, the Scottsboro Boys, and thousands of lynchings justified by fabricated white claims of assault. White womanhood has been positioned as fragile, pure, and in need of protection, and white men have used that myth to rationalize racial terror.

Before you become fragile, this ain’t about individual white women being “bad.” This is about a system that treats their emotions as evidence, their claims as truth, and their discomfort as justification for Black death.

White womanhood has been weaponized; not by accident, but by design.

White Lies Are Deadly

People like to call them “white lies,” as if they are small or harmless. But Rosewood proves what Black people have always known: white lies, especially those told by white women about Black people, have never been harmless. Ever. They have justified massacres, lynchings, imprisonment, and generational trauma.

A white woman’s lie erased an entire damn town.
A white woman’s lie killed innocent Black men.
A white woman’s lie displaced Black families for generations.

And she was never held accountable.

The System Never Stopped

Rosewood ain’t ancient history. It is a warning. Because the same dynamics still operate today:

White women calling the police on Black people for existing.
White women weaponizing fear in stores, parks, and workplaces.
White women crying when confronted, shifting blame, and expecting sympathy.
White institutions responding to those tears with force.

The danger of white lies ain’t fucking metaphorical. It is historical. It is structural. It is ongoing.

Rosewood: The Blueprint of White Supremacy

Y’all should be talking about Rosewood. You should be teaching your children this history. Rosewood shows exactly how fast white fear turns into white violence. It shows how white womanhood has been used to justify racial terror. It shows how lies (even the tiny ones) become mass Black death when whiteness is the default authority.

And this is exactly why they do not teach Rosewood. Because teaching Rosewood means admitting that white supremacy ain’t a mistake; it’s the design, an insidious design. It means admitting that white lies kill. It means admitting that white institutions protect white violence. It means admitting that entire Black communities have been erased because whiteness decided it could. And white folks cannot handle that reality.

They do not teach Rosewood because it forces white people to confront the truth: white supremacy is fucking deadly, intentional, and still operating in real time.

Rosewood ain’t just a massacre, y’all. It is a system.
A system where white lies are treated as truth.
A system where white tears are treated as evidence.
A system where white violence is treated as protection.
A system where Black life is treated as collateral.

And we are living inside that same system today, even if white folks stay in denial about it.

Every missing Black child.
Every murdered Black teen whose case goes cold before it even starts.
Every Black family forced to search for their own because the police won’t.
Every headline that never gets written.
Every Black community that has to do the work the state refuses to do.

And every Black person found hanging from a tree in a public park; with police calling it a “suicide” before they even finish looking at the damn body.
That ain’t coincidence.
That ain’t an accident.
That is the same racist system doing what it has always done: disappearing Black people and protecting the white violence that disappears us.

White supremacy did not end in 1923. But you know that. It did not fade, it did not weaken, and it damn sure did not apologize. It simply changed its methods: traded the mob for the badge, traded the torch for the report, traded the lynching tree for a “suicide” ruling delivered before the body is even cold.

And every missing Black child, every murdered Black teen whose case goes cold in a week, every Black person found hanging from a tree in a public park while police rush to call it suicide; all of it is proof that this white‑supremacy‑built system is still running exactly as designed.

The Death Toll That Erased the Dead

The official death toll of the Rosewood Massacre is eight, but everybody who has studied Rosewood knows that number is a fucking lie of white convenience. Survivor accounts, historical research, and community testimony make it clear that the real number of Black people killed was far higher, likely several dozen, and possibly between 27 and 200. The state recorded eight because eight was easier to swallow. Eight was easier to teach. Eight was easier to forget.

Roy Veal was 55 years old. He returned home to fight a lawsuit to keep his family’s land. He was doing what Black Southerners have had to do for generations: defend what is theirs from a state that never stopped trying to take it.

He did not get far.

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The Suicide That Makes No Damn Sense

On April 24, 2004, Roy Veal was found hanging from a tree. Mississippi wants you to accept that image without thinking too hard about the details. They want you to swallow the word “suicide” and move the fuck on. But the scene itself refuses to cooperate with their story, as usual.

A blue flower cover had been pulled over his face. Not draped. Pulled. Y’all, someone took the time to conceal his identity, to stage him, to turn his body into a message. And we are supposed to believe Roy Veal did that to himself; that he covered his own face before hanging himself? That he prepared his own display?

Under his feet, papers had been burned. Not scattered. Burned. So we are supposed to believe he lit a fire beneath himself, waited for the flames to rise, and then climbed up to hang himself? When exactly did he burn those papers? Before he climbed the tree? While he was already hanging? Mississippi offers no timeline because any timeline collapses under the weight of its own damn absurdity.

There was no chair at the scene. No ladder. Nothing that would allow a 55‑year‑old man to climb, position himself, cover his own face, burn papers beneath his own feet, and then hang himself from a tree. I am shaking my head as I type this because how the hell was this believed by anyone? Mississippi did not just fail to clarify; they ignored the impossibility. They never explained how a man could stage his own death with no tools, no platform, no physical means to reach the height where his body was found.

So we are supposed to believe he burned papers under his own feet without standing on anything. We are supposed to believe he pulled a blue flower cover over his own face and then somehow navigated a tree with no support. We are supposed to believe he suspended himself in midair, arranged himself, masked himself, and then died in a pose that mirrors every historical lynching this country has ever seen.

And yet Mississippi stamped the word “suicide” on the file and walked away.

Fuck Mississippi.

The Reenactment: Slavery’s Script in 2004

What they did to Roy Veal ain’t new. It ain’t modern. It ain’t accidental. It is the same choreography of white violence that has followed Black people from the plantation to the present. Mississippi ain’t improvising; it’s fucking repeating itself.

The way his body was found mirrors the exact staging enslavers used to terrorize Black communities. Enslaved people were killed and then arranged, positioned, displayed in ways meant to send a message to every other Black person who dared to resist, dared to claim land, dared to assert humanity. Hanging a body from a tree was never just murder; it was communication. It was punishment, spectacle, and warning all at once. Covering the face was part of that ritual: a deliberate stripping of identity, a way to turn a Black person into an object, a symbol, a threat.

Roy Veal was found hanging from a tree. That alone carries the full weight of white American slavery; the tree as a tool of domination, a stage for white supremacy, a place where Black life was extinguished and displayed. But the blue flower cover over his face is an even older echo: the forced masking of enslaved people, the denial of personhood, the transformation of a human being into a message. That detail is not random. It is not incidental. It is historical fucking muscle memory.

And the burned papers beneath his feet? That is plantation logic in its purest damn form. Enslavers burned freedom papers, burned manumission documents, burned land deeds held by free Black families, burned anything that proved Black agency or Black claims to land. Fire was a weapon used to erase evidence, destroy lineage, and make sure no Black person could assert rights over anything. In 2004, someone burned papers under Roy Veal’s body, a Black man fighting for his land, and Mississippi wants us to believe he did that himself, as if he reenacted the very rituals used to terrorize his ancestors.

Doris Gordon said her brother had returned to the family home in Wilkinson County “to help with a lawsuit pending against our family.” “There are people trying to take part of our land because they apparently think there is oil on the land.” At the time, county coroner Travis Sharp had not been contacted, and the Sheriff’s Department declined to comment.

Roy’s death is the same white violence, dressed in modern clothing, executed with the same intention: silence the Black person who dares to fight for land, and make the death look self‑inflicted.

Mississippi’s “suicide” ruling ain’t just a fucking failure. It is an endorsement of the same logic that governed slavery; the belief that Black death is natural, expected, unremarkable, and unworthy of investigation. The belief that Black people kill themselves in ways that perfectly mimic historical lynchings. The belief that the white‑ass state’s word matters more than the evidence in front of our damn faces.

Roy Veal’s death ain’t just a modern injustice. It is a historical reenactment. A message. A warning. A continuation of the same white violence Mississippi has inflicted on Black people for centuries, followed by the same lie to cover it up.

The Machinery Mississippi Uses to Erase Black Death

Since that day, nothing has moved.

No investigation.
No reconsideration.
No justice.

Just silence; the kind Mississippi relies on.

This is the same Mississippi that failed Juliana Nitza.
The same Mississippi that failed Trey Reed.
The same Mississippi that is failing Nolan Wells.
The same Mississippi that keeps insisting that the violence happening to Black people, violence we are watching in real time, is somehow our imagination.

Roy Veal’s death ain’t an isolated case. It is part of a continuum; a straight line from historical lynchings to modern “suicides” that only ever seem to happen to Black people in counties where white power still decides what counts as truth.

Mississippi did not stop lynching Black people. It just learned how to write the paperwork.

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Why We Refuse to Let This Case Die

Twenty years is a long time for a family to wait. It’s a long time for a community to carry unanswered questions. It’s a long time for a state to pretend that silence is closure. But cold cases ain’t gonna solve themselves. They get solved when people refuse to let them rot, when communities refuse to let the state bury the truth under paperwork and neglect.

Roy Veal deserved justice in 2004. He deserves it now. His family deserved answers then. They deserve them now. And Black people in Mississippi deserve to live in a state that does not treat our deaths as administrative inconveniences.

Because this case ain’t just about Roy Veal, it’s about the pattern; the way Mississippi keeps producing “suicides” that look exactly like lynchings, the way they keep dismissing Black death as self‑inflicted, the way they keep telling us that what we are seeing with our own damn eyes is somehow our imagination. Y’all, it is about the message they thought they were sending in 2004: don’t fight for your land, don’t challenge white power, don’t expect justice.

And it is about the message we send back now:

We ain’t done.
We ain’t quiet.
We ain’t moving on.

Mississippi deserves to be held accountable every single time it tries to bury Black murder under the word “suicide.” Every time it tries to rewrite violence as choice. Every time it tries to turn a lynching into a paperwork error.

Roy Veal’s case still matters. We cannot let Mississippi think they can continue getting away with erasing Black people.

Call to Action: The Pressure Mississippi Can’t Ignore

This case may be 20 years old, but don’t get it twisted; that does not make it untouchable. Cold cases do not solve themselves; they get solved when communities refuse to let the state bury them. Mississippi has made it clear the police ain’t going to do shit. So we go above them. We go around them. We apply pressure where it actually matters.

If Mississippi won’t move, then we push.

Demand Action from the Adams County DA

Wilkinson County does have its own DA. The region falls under the Adams County District Attorney’s Office, and they are responsible for prosecutions. They need to hear from us; loudly, repeatedly, and without apology.

Adams County District Attorney
307 Market St #2
Natchez, MS 39120
Phone: 601‑445‑4099

Tell them exactly what they have avoided for twenty years: Reopen Roy Veal’s case. Reevaluate the “suicide” ruling. Bring in an independent investigator who ain’t invested in protecting Mississippi’s legacy of racial violence.

Confront the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office

The Attorney General’s office has the authority to demand a fresh investigation, appoint outside reviewers, and challenge local rulings. They need to be forced to explain themselves. Do not expect this shit to be easy. They will resist. Hard.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch
550 High Street, Suite 1200
Jackson, MS 39205
Mailing: P.O. Box 220, Jackson, MS 39205
Phone: 601‑359‑3680

Ask Lynn Fitch these questions: How does a Black man found hanging from a tree with a covered face and burned papers beneath him get labeled a suicide?
What standards are the cops using? Why does Mississippi keep producing “suicides” that look exactly like lynchings?

Pressure Every Elected Official Who Can Move This Case

Because the police ain’t going to do shit. They have already shown us that. This case needs a fresh independent investigation, not another internal review designed to protect the county.

Write to:

• Your state representatives

• Your state senators

• The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus

• Civil rights organizations with legal muscle

Tell them this case demands outside eyes; investigators who ain’t tied to Mississippi’s political machinery or its habit of rewriting violence as choice.

Build Collective Power: A Community Review Forum

Yes, individual calls matter, but collective pressure changes outcomes. I encourage you to build a space where Black folks, advocates, researchers, journalists, and legal minds can gather to examine cases like Roy Veal’s, Juliana Nitza’s, Trey Reed’s, and Nolan Wells’. A place where evidence can be pooled, documents shared, patterns tracked, and coordinated pressure campaigns emerge.

The community review forum I envision for y’all’s communities becomes a command center hub:

• to review these suspicious cases,

• to identify patterns of white state violence,

• to organize call‑in days,

• to track which officials respond and which ones hide,

• to build a public record Mississippi cannot erase.

This is how we fight back; not alone, but together, y’all.

Roy Veal deserved justice in 2004.
He deserves it now.

And Mississippi deserves to be held accountable every single time it tries to bury Black truth under the word “suicide.”

The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Support the work

Rest in Power, King

DISCLAIMER

My anti‑racism articles are available only to my paid subscribers. This is intentional. As a Black woman doing this work, people will take, take, take from me if I don’t set hard boundaries. White folks especially will steal language, steal frameworks, and steal labor while pretending they are “sharing resources.” I do not work for free for white people, and I do not let my intellectual property get lifted and repackaged. I charge because theft is real, exploitation is real, and protecting my work is survival. Keep this work inside our community. Do not share my content with people who have not invested in it. Do not use my material to teach your own anti‑racism sessions or to build your own “curriculum.” If you want to leverage my work beyond your personal growth, ask me. And yes, there will be a fee.

White people love to remind me that “race is a social construct,” like it is a fucking trapdoor out of accountability. They say it with confidence, especially when I’m talking about being raised by a white family, as if repeating that line somehow erases the harm, the power, or the patterns I lived through. Point fucking blank: systems do not give a fuck about whether race is “real.” Systems care that race is used. And once a system uses a category to distribute harm, that category becomes real in its impact, real in its outcomes, real in its consequences, real in the way it shapes every part of our lives.

That is the contradiction that keeps showing up in anti‑racism spaces: white people want the comfort of “we’re all human” while still living inside systems that treat us anything but equal. They want to philosophize their way out of responsibility. They want the vibes without the accountability. They want abstraction because abstraction feels safer than admitting the structure is doing exactly what it was designed to do, and that they are benefiting from it.

Look, if you stop naming race, you stop seeing racism. Full stop. And once you stop seeing racism, you stop fighting it. That is the danger, y’all. Not the construct; the refusal to track what the construct has been used to do.

Answer this in your anti-racism journal: If race is “just a construct,” then what the hell do you think is causing the real‑life advantages white people get and the real‑life harm Black people keep taking?

When You Erase Race, You Erase the Evidence

Remember, racial categories ain’t about identity here; they are about measurement. They are about pattern recognition. They are about tracking the consequences of power.

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Yesterday, I chose .

Karen is a white woman, and one of my fiercest anti‑racism students. She does the work with accuracy, seriousness, and zero theatrics. She engages my writing like someone who understands that anti‑racism ain’t a brand; it’s a discipline. And when she side‑steps, she owns her shit without fragility and identifies exactly how she’s going to correct it moving forward.

I selected her because of what I’ve watched her do with the cases I’m writing about. When I published the details of Julianna Nitza’s case, a case buried under white silence, white delay, and white institutional fog, Karen didn’t just read it. She acted. She was the one who identified the detective covering Julianna’s case. She found the name, and she shared it with the community. She did the kind of work these white systems hope nobody does.

That matters.

Because when white people do anti‑racism work correctly, they don’t center themselves. They center the truth. They don’t ask for credit. They take responsibility. They don’t wait for Black women to carry the entire load. They pick up the damn shovel.

Karen does that.

She shows up with precision, not ego. With commitment, not sentiment. With action, not performance. I see her. I see the way she engages these cases. I see the way she treats this work like something real, not symbolic. And I want her to have something for herself.

The $50 appreciation gift ain’t a prize. It ain’t a reward. It ain’t a pat on the head. It’s a directive: use this on yourself. Because even white people doing anti‑racism work correctly get ground down by the emotional and psychological weight of confronting their own systems. And when someone shows up with integrity, I name it, and I act accordingly.

Karen’s activism inside this community is a reminder that anti‑racism ain’t abstract. It ain’t theoretical. It ain’t a social media identity. It’s a set of actions that either expose harm or allow harm to continue. Karen chose exposure. She chose accountability. She chose to act. And I’m proud to have her in my community.

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Tyler’s family did not learn of his death from law enforcement.
They learned from friends.

Lexington Police labeled the shooting accidental and self‑inflicted almost immediately. Yet one of the men present, Bryce M. Chestnut, was arrested for tampering with evidence related to the shooting. Even with that arrest, LexPD has not listed Tyler’s death as an active investigation, nor have they marked it as suspicious. As of today, Tyler’s case does not appear on the Lexington Police Department’s active investigation website at all.

That omission ain’t a damn clerical error. It is a fucking choice.

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They Left Out Race Because They Always Do When the Kids Are White

Coverage of Tyler’s death has not included the races of the other individuals present. The reports barely mention anything about the other people at the scene. Given the long, documented history of white American media, that omission is very fucking troublesome. When non‑white people are involved in violent incidents, their race is often highlighted immediately and with glee; sometimes even before facts are confirmed. When race is omitted, it is usually because the individuals involved are white.

The absence of racial identification here ain’t an oversight. It is part of a pattern y’all need to pay attention to.

The Law Doesn’t Support LexPD’s Story

Kentucky’s legal framework around gun liability is clear enough to raise serious fucking questions about LexPD’s “accidental, self‑inflicted” racist asss conclusion.

Under KRS § 527.100 and related civil liability principles, a person who provides, loans, or makes a firearm accessible can be held liable if another person is injured or killed with that firearm; especially if the gun was unsecured, handled recklessly, or introduced into a situation where foreseeable harm could occur.

Kentucky also recognizes negligent entrustment, meaning: If you bring a gun into a space, and someone else is harmed with that gun (even if they pull the trigger themselves), you can still be legally responsible.

This ain’t some obscure law, y’all. It is standard liability.

So why the fuck did Lexington Police rush to declare Tyler’s death “self‑inflicted” when:

• a gun was present,

• multiple young adults were involved,

• evidence was allegedly tampered with,

• and the person arrested for that tampering was released without the case being listed as active?

Why was Tyler’s family left to learn of his death from peers instead of police?

Why is this case already being treated like something to close, not something to investigate?

LexPD Treated Tyler’s Death Like an Inconvenience

LexPD’s silence ain’t just disrespectful; it is dangerous. An 18‑year‑old child died. There was an unsecured gun at the scene. Evidence was allegedly tampered with. Liability laws exist for exactly this kind of situation. And yet the department has chosen to treat Tyler’s death as an inconvenience rather than a responsibility.

When a police department shrugs off a Black child’s death, it sends a very loud and fucking clear message: You can kill Black people, and the system will look away. That message shapes how white people act, how Black families are treated, and how quickly institutions move to bury the truth.

This is unacceptable. And it is racist.

Demand Accountability From LexPD

Lexington Police Department
Phone: 859‑258‑3600
General Contact Form: https://www.lexingtonky.gov/police-department

LexPD has refused to treat Tyler’s death as an active case. They classified it as accidental and self‑inflicted, arrested someone for evidence tampering, and still chose not to list the case on their active investigations page. That ain’t transparency. It is obstruction. And we cannot stand for it.

Tyler’s family deserves answers, and the public deserves accountability.
Contact LexPD and demand a formal investigation.

Verbiage y’all can use

I am contacting you regarding the death of Tyler Jay Smith, who died from a gunshot wound on July 4–5, 2026. His case is not listed on your active investigations page, despite an arrest for evidence tampering and clear questions about liability under Kentucky law. Your department labeled his death accidental and self‑inflicted before notifying his family or conducting a full investigation.

I am demanding that Lexington Police Department formally open and list this case as an active investigation, provide an explanation for the failure to notify Tyler’s family, and release information about the evidence tampering arrest. The public deserves accountability, and Tyler’s family deserves the truth.

If you want a more Jackie-style version, here it is:

Tyler Jay Smith’s death requires an active investigation. Your department’s failure to notify his family, the premature “accidental” classification, and the arrest for evidence tampering demand immediate review. List this case publicly, open a formal investigation, and provide a clear explanation for your actions.

Email them. Call them. Every damn day. Institutions count on the public losing interest. They count on silence. They count on exhaustion. Don’t give it to them.

Flood their inbox. Flood their phone lines. Make it impossible for LexPD to pretend this case is closed.

Persistence is pressure. And pressure is the only thing that makes this system move.

The Cost of Keeping Us Visible

Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.

Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.

I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.

If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.

Support the work.

Rest in Power, Young King

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The Lynching Era Never Ended. It Evolved.

White people talk about lynching like it was some distant nightmare, but Mississippi treated it like public fucking policy. The conviction rate for those murders was zero. Mississippi did not convict white people for killing Black people. Not once. White people could kill us in broad daylight, pose for photos, and go home for dinner; fully protected by the state. And law enforcement did not just stand by; they fucking joined in. Thirty percent of lynch mobs included police. Forty percent had police directly involved. Mississippi did not just allow law enforcement to participate in racial terror; it relied on them to enforce it. That is the part white people pretend not to understand. If police were willing to drag Black people out of their homes, hand them over to angry, violent white mobs, or lead the mobs themselves, why is it so “unthinkable” that they would be involved in covering up Black deaths and disappearances today?

The same institution that helped capture and kill us from 1877 to 1950 is the one investigating our deaths now. Make it make sense. Mississippi literally built its political and economic structure on the freedom to kill Black people without consequence, and that freedom shaped everything: land ownership, voting rights, generational wealth, community stability. Forty‑five percent of Black‑owned farms disappeared during that period because families fled for their lives. Billions in Black wealth evaporated. Trauma became inheritance.

Y’all, Mississippi did not just kill Black people; it killed our futures. And it did it with law enforcement standing shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the killers. That is the lineage. That is the continuity. That is why the “no foul play” chorus today feels like the same old tired song to the Black community.

The Violence Didn’t Stop. It Institutionalized.

You cannot erase that kind of terror, y’all. It sits in the soil. It sits in the institutions. It sits in the way Mississippi responds to Black death today. The state never repaired the harm, never acknowledged the truth, never rebuilt what it destroyed. And because it never did any of that, the same patterns keep repeating. Black families still get silence instead of answers. Black victims still get dismissed before the investigation even starts. The word of white suspects still gets treated like the gospel.

Mississippi behaves like the lynching era never ended; it just changed its vocabulary.

Nolan Wells Is the Pattern

Look at what happened to Nolan Wells. An eighteen‑year‑old Black boy goes out on a boat with a group of white boys, the only Black person in the group, and somehow he doesn’t come back. Somehow the story doesn’t add up. Somehow the investigation moves slowly and quietly. And somehow Mississippi wants us to swallow “no foul play” before the facts even settle. This ain’t confusion and it ain’t a damn coincidence. This is the same racial pattern Mississippi has run unchecked for over a fucking century.

And let’s talk about the power sitting behind this. One of those white boys’ mothers is a judge. A judge. Someone who lives inside the very system that decides what gets investigated, what gets ignored, and whose story gets treated as truth. Mississippi wants us to pretend that detail is irrelevant, like it does not tilt the entire fucking process before it even starts. But we know better. We’ve lived this too long.

Then there’s Nolan’s phone, the part Mississippi hopes nobody pays attention to. When his family recovered it, the Snapchat content from the trip was gone. Not expired; gone. Snapchat does not just vanish in a few hours. It stays up for a full day. But the snaps were missing, the messages were wiped, and the phone showed activity that happened after it was already in his friends’ hands. His mother said there were no photos, no videos, nothing from the trip, which makes no sense because Nolan always shared snaps when he was having fun. The location history on the phone also did not match the story the boys told. The digital trail contradicts the human one. And that ain’t an accident. That is tampering. That is obstruction. That is someone cleaning up a narrative before the truth can settle. Attorney Ben Crump called it “very concerning.” I call it exactly what it looks like: a cover‑up in motion.

And look at the autopsy; the delays, the contradictions, the way information trickles out instead of being presented clearly. Mississippi has a long history of using autopsies to blur the truth, not reveal it. When the state wants a death to disappear, the paperwork gets murky, the timelines get fuzzy, and the “official findings” start sounding like pre‑written excuses. Nolan will not get justice in Mississippi. He will only get a cover‑up. That is the damn pattern, folks. That is the lineage. That is the racist ass system doing exactly what it was built to do.

Y’all, Mississippi has done this shit for generations. Black person disappears. White people give inconsistent stories. Police accept those stories without pressure. The state rushes to declare “no foul play”. And the Black family is left to investigate their own child’s death. This ain’t new. This ain’t rare. This is Mississippi’s operating procedure. Nolan Wells is part of a long line of Black people who went missing or died in Mississippi while the state shrugged.

Mississippi did not stop lynching, y’all. It just stopped calling it lynching. The actors changed clothes. The language changed tone. The violence stayed the same. And the white silence is deafening.

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The System Never Changed

This is why I keep saying the past ain’t the past. The same conditions that made Mississippi the epicenter of racial terror still fucking exist: law enforcement impunity, white suspect protection, media silence, state refusal to investigate white violence.

If Mississippi protected 99.99% of white killers during the lynching era, why would it suddenly care now?
If Mississippi let police participate in lynch mobs, why would its police be trusted today?
If Mississippi destroyed billions in Black wealth, why would it protect Black life in 2026?

The continuity is the point. Mississippi ain’t failing; it is functioning exactly as designed.

The Bare Minimum to Stop a 150‑Year Pattern

Fixing this requires more than symbolic gestures or “community conversations.” Mississippi needs federal oversight because it has proven for 150 years that it cannot investigate racial violence honestly. It needs independent investigative bodies with subpoena power so families are not forced to become detectives. It needs reparations for the land, wealth, and futures stolen through terror. It needs transparency laws that make secrecy impossible. And Black communities need control over the systems that police them, because Mississippi’s current structure is built on anti‑Black control, not public safety. These ain’t radical ideas. They are the bare minimum required to interrupt a system that has been killing us since Reconstruction.

The Racist Institutions Must Be Torn Down and Rebuilt

Let me be clear: this shit will never end because there is no damn accountability. Mississippi has never been held accountable for the violence it built its identity on. Not once. Not in 1877. Not in 1950. Not in 2026. The same institutions that helped capture and kill Black people during the lynching era are the ones investigating our deaths now. And they are using the same dan tactics: silence, delay, contradiction, confusion, and protection for anyone who ain’t Black.

Mississippi has never confronted the truth of what it did or what it still does. It has never admitted that its courts, its police departments, its coroners’ offices, its political machinery were designed to protect white people at any cost and to erase Black suffering whenever possible. That design did not disappear. It did not dissolve. It did not “age out.” It is still running. It is still shaping outcomes. It is still deciding who gets justice and who gets buried under excuses.

Until accountability is real (not symbolic, not performative, not “we’ll look into it”), Mississippi will keep disappearing us, killing us, dismissing us, and lying about us. And accountability does not mean a task force or a press conference. Accountability means dumping and rebuilding every damn institution that was built on anti‑Black violence. The police. The courts. The investigative bodies. The coroner systems. The political structures that protect them. All of it. Because you cannot reform a system that was designed to harm you. You can only replace it.

Mississippi’s institutions ain’t broken. They are functioning exactly as intended. That is the fucking problem. And that is why Nolan Wells, and every Black person who came before him, will never get justice inside a system built to deny it. Mississippi will only offer a cover‑up, because that is what its institutions were built to produce.

That is the truth. And I’m tired of pretending it is anything else. Y’all need to listen to this Black woman.

I Taught You. Now Support the Work

I just gave y’all an entire damn education on Mississippi. The history, the violence, and what real solutions look like. I keep showing up for you, so y’all need to keep showing up for me. This is how you show appreciation for a Black woman’s labor: you support the work that is making an impact. Please make a donation to my academy. And if you can, set up a monthly one. Do not just take from my work; invest in it.

Honor Black Labor

My Anti‑Racism Crew Has Work to Do

This part is for my anti‑racism students; the ones who do not flinch when the truth gets loud. The white people who understand that Mississippi’s institutions won’t fix themselves because they were never built for Black people in the first place. If we want accountability, we have to create pressure outside the system, because the system is the problem. Here’s what you can do now.

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