JACKSON, Mississippi – Police are investigating the death of a black college student on Tuesday and found hanging online rumors hanging from a tree on the campus of Deltay State University in Mississippi, evoking a history of racist violence in the Jim Crow era, even as authorities say there is no initial evidence of crime.
The campus police chief said the death of the 21-year-old student showed no sign of foul, and his body was found near the campus pickle court earlier Monday.
Delta State Police Chief Michael Peeler said there is also no evidence of ongoing threats to students and faculty. He told reporters Monday that the Mississippi Department of Investigation, as well as local police and sheriff’s representatives, are assisting in the death investigation.
A woman who answered a phone call at the campus police department on Tuesday said the agency had no further information to release.
In a statement cited by local news outlets, Borival County coroner Randolph Seals Jr.
The coroner did not immediately return to the phone from the Associated Press on Tuesday.
An attempt to reach the student’s family did not immediately succeed. A woman told the Associated Press in an online message that a woman did not speak to a reporter. The other two said they were distant relatives who refused to comment when they were contacted by phone.
In a video posted on the university’s Facebook page on Tuesday, Delta Gov. Dan Ennis said the university is resuming business while continuing to mourn. He said campus officials stay in touch with the students’ families.
“We know we can never fully heal this wound,” Ennis said. “We continue to work with investigators. We continue to make sure that all the information we need to provide the authorities. We continue to hope for an answer.”
The courses were cancelled at the university on Monday, and the same was true of events in September 1925 to celebrate its 100th anniversary of the Delta State Teachers College.
Delta State is located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta near the Arkansas State Line, with more than 2,600 students in fall 2024, with 42% of them being black.
Many social media posts about the case have caused a darker period in American history, when black killings were almost entirely killed by white male alert people, causing racial horror in the depths of Mississippi and the South.
Cleveland’s Delta State Campus is about 30 miles (48 km) from the site associated with Emmett Till’s infamous lynching. A sign of the landing of the Tallahatchie River near Glendora on the Tallahatchie River commemorates the discovery of Till’s limbs in the water 70 years ago.
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Russ Bynum, an AP reporter in Savannah, Georgia, contributed.
