Otis Byrd
Otis Byrd, Mississippi
Otis Byrd, 54, went missing on March 2 after being dropped off at the Riverwalk Casino in Vicksburg, Mississippi. On March 19, Byrd’s body was found hanging from a tree about a half mile from his house in Claiborne County. Many questions have arisen, such as whether Byrd was killed and how his body got in the tree. The investigation has been joined by the FBI and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. Byrd spent 25 years in prison after being convicted of killing Lucille Trim, a white woman who owned a local country store, in a robbery that netted him $101. A hanging in Mississippi is particularly disturbing because it is the state that had the most lynchings during the 100 years after Reconstruction, with 581 on record, according to statistics compiled by the Tuskegee Institute.
Frederick Jermaine Carter, Mississippi
Frederick Jermaine Carter, 26, was found hanging in a Mississippi tree in a white suburb on Dec. 3, 2010. While the USA Today first reported it as a suicide, the NAACP contested those findings, claiming it was a lynching. Carter, who lived in neighboring Sunflower County, was helping his stepfather paint a building. The stepfather went to get tools and when he returned, Carter was nowhere to be found.
