National headlines have been focused on the response to the chokehold homicide of Eric Garner in NYC, continuing events taking place in Ferguson around the murder of Mike Brown, and demonstrations for justice taking place around the country. But Rev. Dr. William Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP; Al McSurely, veteran civil rights lawyer; the family of Lennon Lacy and concerned members of the community want answers to the very questionable death of Lennon Lacy. He was found hanging from a swing, in shoes that were not his own, back in August. The case was quickly ruled a suicide. Too quickly.
The North Carolina NAACP held a townhall meeting in Bladenboro, North Carolina, on December 1 to discuss updates in the case of the hanging death of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy.
The above is a trailer—the full townhall meeting is posted below the fold. The disturbing specter of strange fruit and the era of racial lynchings has distressed all of those affected by the events that took place on August 29. The more questions that are raised, the more questions come to the foreground.
Follow me below the fold for more detail and the latest updates.
If you have time, please watch the full town meeting:
The Guardian and Global Grind mentions these inconsistencies that have raised questions about the hanging death:
The Lump On Lacy’s Head:
The Shoes Lacy Had On When Authorities Discovered His Body
Lacy’s Older, White Girlfriend
The Racially Charged Town
The Teenager Had No History Of Mental Illness
His Grave (desecrated)
The Investigation (or lack of it)
From The Institute for Southern Studies, Facing South blog:
The strange death of Lennon Lacy: Another lynching mistaken for suicide?
On the morning of Aug. 29, the body of Lennon Lacy was found hanging from a noose fastened to a swing set at a trailer park in the small eastern North Carolina town of Bladenboro, about a half-mile from his family's home. A 17-year-old African-American junior and football player at West Bladen High School, Lacy was last seen leaving the house around 10:30 p.m. the previous evening to take a walk, as he often did. A 911 call came in at 7:25 a.m. the next day, a Friday. "I need EMS," said the caller, a woman who got physically ill during the conversation. "I have a man hanging from a swing set … Bladen Rental Properties." The dispatcher told the caller to cut down the person to see if he was breathing. He wasn't. The call ended with the dispatcher sending help as the distraught woman tried to loose the body. The initial investigation into the death, conducted by a State Bureau of Investigation team working under the direction of the local district attorney, quickly concluded that Lacy's death was a suicide -- too quickly, the N.C. NAACP charges.
The civil rights group has gotten involved in the case at the request of the Lacy family, who find it difficult to believe Lennon committed suicide. They say he was excited about playing his first varsity football game on the very day his body was discovered. They bristle over investigators' claim that he was suicidally depressed and say he was just experiencing normal grief over the recent death of his great-uncle. There are also questions about why if the teen were going to kill himself he would do so at a mostly white trailer park.
The NAACP questions whether the Lacy case is yet another instance of what it calls "quick call suicides" -- suspicious hanging deaths of black men, most of them in the South, that were immediately classified as suicides without extensive investigations despite evidence that foul play may have been involved. This week the SBI said it has addressed all "viable" leads in the case but that it would still investigate any new information it gets."There was such a rush to say suicide," N.C. NAACP President Rev. William Barber said at a press conference held in Raleigh last month to announce the group had called on the U.S. Department of Justice to get involved in the case. "Questions remain. Have they been thoroughly investigated? If not, why?"
Daily Kos diarist ExpatGirl is following the case (see here, here, and here) and will be reporting from North Carolina.
Updates will be available at the "Justice for Lennon Lacy" NAACP website.