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New Black Panther Party Came To Mississippi Over Hanging Fears. Now A Black Man Is Charged With Murder In One Case
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JACKSON, Miss. — The discovery of Black people hanging from trees in Mississippi has brought national attention, protests and accusations of modern day lynchings. The New Black Panther Party has become involved in Mississippi as activists demand answers about the deaths. But now one of the cases that helped fuel those fears has taken a major turn. A Black man has been charged with murder in the death of Tasia Fortune.
Fortune, a 29 year old Black mother of four, was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in Jackson on August 3. The circumstances immediately evoked Mississippi’s horrific history of lynching and racial violence, and the case became part of a much larger conversation about the recent hanging deaths of Black people in the state.
The Mississippi State Medical Examiner has since ruled Fortune’s death a homicide. Jackson police arrested 51 year old Jarques Ratliff and charged him with murder in connection with her death. Ratliff is Black.
That development creates a sharp contrast with some of the racial speculation that surrounded Mississippi’s hanging deaths. The New Black Panther Party has been among the groups demanding answers in Mississippi, and its national chairman, Krystal Muhammad, publicly described the separate hanging death of Delta State University student Trey Reed as a “lynching.” Authorities have ruled Reed’s death a suicide.
But Fortune’s case is different. Authorities say she was killed, and police now have someone charged with that killing.
Fortune’s own mother had urged people not to jump to conclusions about race even before an arrest was made. Christy Spivey said she believed someone killed her daughter, but she did not believe her daughter’s death was racially motivated. She believed it was personal.
The arrest does not prove that every concern raised by activists was unfounded. It does not establish a motive, and it does not tell the public everything that happened to Fortune. Ratliff has been charged, not convicted, and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
Police have also indicated that the investigation is continuing and additional arrests could be made.
But the case raises an uncomfortable question about how quickly a horrifying image can become a narrative before investigators establish the facts.
A Black woman hanging from a tree in Mississippi understandably carries enormous historical weight. Mississippi’s history of lynching is real, brutal and undeniable. That history is precisely why Fortune’s death demanded a thorough investigation.
But history is not evidence of who committed a particular crime.
There is an enormous difference between demanding answers and deciding what those answers must be before investigators have them.
In Fortune’s case, investigators now say a Black man associated with her is the first person responsible enough to face a murder charge. Police have not announced a racial motive. They have not publicly disclosed the exact nature of Ratliff’s relationship with Fortune, and they have not said whether other suspects may have played a role.
Those unanswered questions matter.
So does what investigators have learned already.
Fortune deserves justice for what actually happened to her, regardless of whether those facts fit anyone’s political or racial narrative.
And with Jackson police saying more arrests may be coming, the full story of Tasia Fortune’s death may still be unfolding.
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I am not comfortable with allowing the process to play out. I have concerns that those behind the process are not reliable.
Black people are reliable witnesses to their own experiences. I want to know more about the suspect, and how he alone was able to lynch someone. Even if Fortune were dead at the time of the lynching, I am skeptical that he could do it alone.
I continue to believe these lynchings need to be investigated by LE outside the state where they occurred. Preferably outside of southern states.
Something stinks. And it’s not the cheese in Denmark.
Thoughts of an old yt woman.