Authorities are investigating the death of 43-year-old Roosevelt Champion III after he was found hanging from a tree in Greensboro, GA.
Someone discovered a body in a brushy area around 11 am today. According to the Greensboro police, Champion was found hanging with a plastic strap around his neck.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation held a press conference where they said there were no signs of foul play at the scene, but they will be investigating this matter. It is said that Champion had been part of an investigation involving a woman who was killed, but he was not a suspect of any wrong doing and was never charged for anything. The point of them bringing this up is a mystery to me, but some may find it a relevant piece of information.
Champion’s unusual death comes on the heels of other cases where black people were found hanging in what many have called modern-day lynchings. 54-year-old Otis Byrd was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi just earlier this year. His family does not believe his death was a suicide.
Last year, 17-year-old Lennon Lacy was found hanging from a swingset in the small town of Bladenboro, NC. Authorities were quick to rule his death a suicide. The NAACP and Lacy’s family, along with others, were concrned over the lack of an investigation. Opponents of the suicide theory point to the fact that it seems physically impossible for Lacy to have done this to himself, and they cannot understand why authorities didn’t take physical evidence and measurements at the scene when they found Lacy’s body.
An important point to the Champion story is that he is said to have been found at a house that was not his.
Lynchings were a huge ?part of white supremacists’ strategy of not merely killing black people but doing it in such a public way as to intimidae entire communities. Knowing this history, it seems hard to imagine people of color choosing to take their life in such a way.
We will stay on top of this investigation, and all of the others mentioned in this article.
