Nearly 60 congressional Democrats demanded Thursday that the Justice Department and FBI investigate black Americans found hanging nationwide, casting the deaths as “modern-day lynchings.”
The letter, led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), was addressed to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel. It was signed largely by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), according to theGrio.
Pressley framed the deaths in blunt terms, invoking the memory of Jim Crow-era violence.
“In this moment of anti-Blackness and emboldened white supremacy, we cannot stand idly by while the strange fruit of Black bodies hang from trees across the country,” Pressley told theGrio.
The Massachusetts Democrat argued that the deaths raise “significant suspicion of foul play” and claimed federal inaction amounted to complicity. “This is part of the legacy of racial terror in the United States,” the letter reads.
Ocasio-Cortez backed the demand on X, writing that she was “proud to have signed onto” the effort to “put a stop to this racial terror.” The lawmakers cited a report documenting more than 70 “modern-day lynchings” between 2000 and 2025. They demanded independent autopsies, audits of local investigations, and systematic data collection on every hanging death of a black individual nationwide.
The letter comes as law enforcement and medical examiners have ruled most of the high-profile cases suicides. Officials in Cobb County, Georgia, ruled out foul play in the death of Kyle Bassinga, 21. Mississippi authorities determined Delta State University student Demartravion “Trey” Reed died by suicide. The Albany Police Department said it found “no evidence” of criminal activity in the death of Earl Smith, 58, and Wisconsin investigators reached a preliminary suicide finding in the death of Torrance Medley.
At least one case remains open as a homicide. Authorities questioned Terence Bernard Anderson, the father of one of Tasia Fortune’s children, and arrested him on unrelated weapons charges.
Former Senate staffer Matt Whitlock questioned the framing. “What do you think ‘widespread’ means if only one of these was actually a homicide,” Whitlock wrote.
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