(WIB) – The historical seasons have changed, but another tree in Mississippi has borne more strange and bitter fruit. The body of a young Black man, a student at Delta State University, was found hanging from a tree last week.

Though officials have tentatively ruled the death of Demartravion “Trey” Reed, 21, a suicide, the grim discovery raised alarm on the small northwestern Mississippi campus. It also drew the attention of civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump and social justice activist Colin Kaepernick.

Suspicion Rooted In the Painful Past

But Reed is one of the latest cases in a macabre, decade-long phenomenon of young Black men found dead in unusual places under questionable circumstances. It has also rekindled an ugly chapter in American history, when violent lynchings of Black men

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