The mother of a black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Mississippi, has told reporters she is still waiting for answers from officials more than a month later.
Christy Spivey’s frustration echoes the wider community’s anger about a case that has sat without a definitive status for weeks.
Police on Tuesday became the first authority to confirm that the death of Tasia Fortune, 29, is being investigated as a potential homicide, yet officials said the official cause of death remains undetermined.
The discovery came on 3 August when a body was found hanging from a tree in the lot of an abandoned home. The shock was compounded by Mississippi’s dark history of racial violence and lynchings.
The community has responded with petitions that have amassed tens of thousands of signatures, demanding greater transparency. Members of Congress, including US Representative Jasmine Crockett, have requested federal intervention, framing the investigation as a potential modern‑day lynching.
“It’s making me angry,” Spivey told reporters. “What is the hold up?” Her attempts to understand the inquiry’s status and to get police updates had earned little reply.
The first public update came in a city council meeting conducted by Police Chief RaShall Brackney, who confirmed that the department “has been investigating this case from day one as a homicide.” He explained it is standard practice to treat pending deaths as potential homicides until an autopsy is available. Authorities had previously limited their description of the case to a death investigation.
Brackney said the department is “conducting the investigation at the highest appropriate level while we await the medical examiner’s findings.” The medical examiner’s office declined to comment on the pending case.
Spivey last saw her daughter alive on 26 July, when Tasia travelled from Mississippi to Kentucky for a family reunion. She said the next time she saw the body at a funeral, she could barely look at it. “I didn’t look straight at her. Her daddy did,” Spivey said.
The case also follows two other Mississippi incidents in the past year where bodies were found hanging from trees, marking the third such occurrence. Both other cases were declared suicides, though one mother contested the findings.
Local residents have launched petitions seeking an independent investigation of the chief medical examiner, Dr. Staci Turner, over the handling of recent cases involving people of colour. Another petition calls for the FBI to investigate Fortune’s death.
Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes, who has visited the surrounding area multiple times, expressed deep concerns but says he has not heard from either federal prosecutors or the FBI after submitting letters seeking assistance. “Nothing from nobody,” he said.
Congresswoman Crockett’s letter to the Department of Justice cites Mississippi’s “appalling historical reputation of violent terrorism against black Americans” and frames the circumstances as “possible cases of modern‑day lynchings.”
The case resonates beyond Mississippi; elsewhere, black Americans found hanged from trees have appeared in several states, with varied rulings. In North Carolina, four such cases appeared this year alone, three deemed suicides while one awaits an autopsy.
Stokes and other local officials have insisted that, regardless of whether the death was a lynching, the key issue is receiving answers and ensuring safety in a city that should make residents feel protected.
Spivey spent the final days before her daughter’s burial juggling the moonlit surgery of a death certificate and the choice between cremation and burial. She wanted to cremate but ultimately preferred a burial, holding out hope for updates that might necessitate an exhumation.
