Black People Are Exhausted

Black people are tired. I am tired.

We are tired of being told we don’t see what’s happening to us with our own eyes. We are tired of being told not to trust what we’ve experienced for generations.

We are being murdered.

Whether it’s by the police, ICE, or at the hands of people we considered friends, we are being murdered. Yet this country expects us to become desensitized to it. We are expected to accept whatever narrative is offered to explain away another Black death.

We are tired of hearing, “No foul play involved.”

Black people don’t hang themselves. We don’t roll ourselves into gym mats. We don’t voluntarily isolate ourselves on islands. Time after time, we are presented with explanations that strain common sense and then we’re expected to quietly accept them and move on.

The trauma isn't only in the loss. It's in being told not to believe what we've seen with our own eyes.

That is trauma.

It isn’t just the deaths themselves. It’s the constant gaslighting that follows them.

I wanted to know how many Black deaths have been attributed to hanging and ultimately classified as suicide. I quickly discovered there is no centralized database tracking this information. Of course there isn’t.

The closest thing I found was research from a Mississippi-based organization called JULIAN, which identified more than 70 suspected modern-day lynchings across seven Southern states between 2000 and 2025. Even that number only includes cases that families and advocates believed warranted further investigation. That’s twenty-five years of documented concern, and it almost certainly represents only a fraction of the true number.

Then I narrowed my search. Looking only at the five-year period between August 5, 2021, and August 5, 2026, I was able to verify at least seven publicly reported cases in which Black people were found hanging or found dead with a ligature attached to a tree.

That isn’t a national total. It’s the minimum number I could verify through publicly available reporting. No government agency maintains a comprehensive public database organized by race, discovery circumstances, and final manner of death.

The cases include:

• Yolna “Yo-Yo” Lubrin (Florida)

• Javion Magee (North Carolina)

• Dennoriss Richardson (Alabama)

• Demartravion “Trey” Reed (Mississippi)

• Kyle Bassinga (Georgia)

• To’Nea Nicole Miller (Florida)

• An unidentified Black woman in Jackson, Mississippi, whose investigation remains ongoing.

Most of these deaths were officially ruled suicides. Several families publicly disputed those conclusions. One remains under investigation. None have officially been classified as racial-terror lynchings.

The larger point isn’t that every one of these cases was defined as a murder. Even though, in my opinion, they were. The larger point is that so many families are left asking questions while the public is told the case is closed.

How many times have we watched a suspicious death quickly become “suicide” or “no foul play suspected?” How many families have been left searching for answers while everyone else moved on?

We know this pattern.

Calling something everything except murder doesn’t change what many Black Americans feel when these stories continue to repeat themselves.

I also wanted to understand how many Black people have been unjustifiably killed by police. Once again, there is no official government database that answers that question. Using the best publicly available sources, including Mapping Police Violence, Campaign Zero, court records, and Department of Justice reporting, the picture over roughly the last five years looks something like this:

Approximately 1,500 Black Americans have been killed by police.

Roughly 250 to 350 of them were classified as unarmed.

Only a small fraction of those cases resulted in criminal charges against an officer.

Even fewer resulted in convictions.

No national database tracks how many ultimately involved findings of excessive force or constitutional violations. Again, there is a data gap.

Today, another conversation is unfolding about whether Black people are truly safe in predominantly white spaces. Sometimes we hear about the deaths that make national headlines, people like Nolan Wells or Tamla Horsford. What we don’t hear nearly as often are the incidents that don’t end in death.

The close calls.

The attempted drownings.

The “accidents.”

One story that has stayed with me involved a little Black boy swimming at a white friend’s house. While they were in the pool, the other children tried to drown him. When the white parents were told what had happened, they laughed it off.

“Boys will be boys.”

His mother refused to accept that explanation. She defended her son because she understood what was at stake. That’s the burden so many Black families carry.

We are expected to remain vigilant all the time. We don’t always have the luxury of relaxing and assuming everyone around us wishes us well. We can’t simply ignore history because someone tells us things are different now.

Our experiences teach us otherwise.

Living with that constant awareness and watching the same patterns repeat changes you.

Being told your concerns are irrational while another family buries another loved one changes you.

That is trauma.

Trauma doesn’t begin with the moment someone dies.

Sometimes it begins the moment a community is told, once again, not to believe what it has seen with its own eyes.

This is something that’s been on my heart lately. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling it.

I love my people and I wish so much more for us.

-Smart Brown Girl