Lennon Lacy was a student attending West Bladen High School, in Bladenboro, North Carolina. On August 29, 2014, at age 17, he was found dead, hanging from the frame of a swing set in the center of a mobile home community.[1] The death was initially declared a suicide by North Carolina's Chief Medical Examiner, but Lacy's family believed that he had been lynched.[1] Lacy, who was black, had been dating a white woman, who also believed Lacy had been murdered, and who claimed neighbors had warned her that their interracial relationship was "not right".[2] In December 2014, the FBI announced it would investigate.[1] In June 2016, the conclusion of the FBI investigation was announced, having found "no evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges".[3]
Documentary edit
The death of Lacy is the central event in a documentary on lynching in America, Always in Season, shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2019, where it won the special jury award for moral urgency. Ed Pilkington wrote in The Guardian that the film "is both a homage to Lennon Lacy and a critique of America’s rotten racial core, weaving the two together through an exploration of blurred memory, denial, obfuscation, betrayal and loss."[4]
See also edit
References edit
- ^ a b c Blackwell, Victor (December 15, 2014). "N.C. teen's hanging death ruled a suicide; mother says it was a lynching". CNN. Archived from the original on 2014-12-16. Retrieved 2014-12-15.
- ^ "Black North Carolina hanging victim's white girlfriend, 32, reveals neighbors had hassled them over interracial romance". Daily News. New York City. 2014-12-19. Archived from the original on 2019-09-21. Retrieved 2019-09-21.
- ^ Pilkington, Ed (June 19, 2016). "Was a black teen's hanging death a hate crime? The FBI answers, two years later". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2019-01-07. Retrieved 2019-01-06.
- ^ Pilkington, Ed (September 21, 2019). "Always in Season: behind the painful film about lynching in America". Archived from the original on September 21, 2019. Retrieved September 21, 2019.