The Black Belt Daily (BBD), an independent media outlet, reported the most recent hanging of a Black father, Demetrius Fleming, on 21 August in North Carolina. An autopsy is currently underway. Fleming’s death is the fourth hanging of a Black person in North Carolina within a year, following three others that were all ruled suicides.
Fleming’s death from hanging was the second hanging in August in North Carolina of a Black man. The first was that of a 32-year-old man from a tree near Nash Square in Downtown Raleigh. It was ruled a suicide.
Within a year, North Carolina has had four hangings, of which three have been ruled suicides, the channel reported.
- Demetrius Fleming — August 2026 (autopsy pending)
- 32-year-old man — August 2026 (ruled a suicide)
- Juliana Nzita — May 2026 (ruled a suicide)
- Cedric Tayhue – June 2026 (ruled a suicide)
Monique from BBD said:
Four Black people have been found hanging within a year. Three out of four of those have been ruled a suicide so far and the police are telling people not to speculate. But when you have four hangings taking place in a state that has had hundreds of documented cases of lynchings, you can’t help but wonder if something deeper is going on.
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Police Chief Lawrence Wiggins said Fleming was already dead when emergency crews arrived on Friday.
He said according to local news:
We’re treating this as an open, equivocal death investigation. The Roanoke Rapids Police Department is committed to finding the facts and reporting them.
This investigation is in its infancy, and it is important to neither make nor perpetuate assumptions as facts. The evidence will provide the conclusion; anything else will create more confusion.
Lack of mainstream coverage
The channel has created a map showing hanging deaths of more than forty Black people in the US since 2018, amid a notable lack of mainstream coverage of these deaths.
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America’s history of lynching Black people
Local news site from North Carolina, the News & Observer, said last week:
Hanging deaths involving Black people have persisted in the past 20 years across the South — according to a study from civil rights group JULIAN tracking cases between 2000 and 2025 — often reigniting fears they will go uninvestigated
They also quoted civil rights organization A. Philip Randolph Institute, saying:
“When a Black person is found hanging from a tree in the American South, authorities cannot reasonably expect the Black community to hear the word ‘suicide’ and stop asking questions. Not with this history. And certainly not now.”
Axios Raleigh said that more than 120 lynchings between 1877 and 1950 have been documented in North Carolina, per the Equal Justice Initiative.
In a state with over 120 documented lynchings, four hangings in one year raise questions that routine rulings cannot answer.
As Ani Says of the Canary asks:
How long are we going to keep ignoring this?
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Featured image via the Black Belt Daily / the Canary
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