The Anatomy Of A “Self-Lynching”?

AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER: A THEORY THAT DEMANDS INVESTIGATION

Let me begin with a necessary distinction.
I am advancing a theory—not alleging as fact—that law enforcement involvement, misconduct, negligence, conflicts of interest, or institutional self-protection should never be automatically excluded when African Americans are found hanging from trees.

I am not accusing the officers investigating Cedric Longanga Tayuhe’s death—or officers in any other specific case—of murder, conspiracy, or participation absent evidence.

I am saying something history makes impossible to dismiss: law enforcement itself must remain within the scope of scrutiny.

American lynching history is filled with examples in which public officials failed to protect Black prisoners, tolerated mob violence, ignored perpetrators, or participated in systems that permitted racial terror to occur without meaningful consequences. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than 4,000 racial-terror lynchings of Black Americans across 20 states between 1877 and 1950.

That history gives Black America no obligation to automatically treat every law-enforcement institution as a disinterested observer when another Black body is discovered in a tree.

This is not a return to some distant “sundown” America.

For many Black Americans, the deeper concern is that some of the institutional habits that enabled America were never completely dismantled.

So from this point forward, my position is simple:

When a Black American is discovered hanging from a tree, investigate the investigators, too.

Examine dispatch records. Examine responding officers. Examine conflicts of interest. Examine surveillance. Examine communications. Examine the chain of custody. Examine who knew what and when.

That is not anti-police.
That is pro-evidence.
A Black man is found hanging from a tree.
Yes, America is experiencing economic and social pressures. Yes, Black Americans experience depression, trauma, and suicide like every other population.

But Black America has also survived slavery, Jim Crow, racial-terror lynching, segregation, mass incarceration, discrimination, police brutality, unemployment, and generations of structural inequality.

Suicide is unquestionably a serious issue in the Black community.

But a tree carries a particular history.

And when that history appears before us again, America should investigate first and explain later—not explain first and investigate afterward.

Before America has absorbed the victim’s name, before independent experts have examined every question, and sometimes before the public has seen complete medical-examiner findings, a familiar word can enter the conversation through authorities:

Suicide.
But what does that word actually mean?
Merriam-Webster defines suicide as ending one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally.

Notice those essential concepts:
Voluntarily. Intentionally.
Those are conclusions requiring evidence. They should never be assumptions preceding it. That is precisely why I challenge what I see as an emerging and deeply troubling narrative surrounding some Black people found hanging from trees: suicide can enter the official narrative early, while questioning whether homicide, coercion, staging, or racial violence has been adequately excluded is dismissed as speculation.

My standard is straightforward:
If it is too early to call it a lynching, then it is also too early to call it a suicide.

FROM ANATOMY OF A LYNCHING TO THE ANATOMY OF A “SELF-LYNCHING”?

There is a reason I chose this title.
Historian James R. McGovern’s Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal examines one of the most notorious racial-terror killings in American history.

Claude Neal was a 23-year-old Black farmworker accused of murdering a white woman in Florida in 1934. Authorities moved Neal between jails in an effort to protect him, but six white men eventually seized him from an Alabama jail, returned him to Jackson County, Florida, tortured and murdered him, and later displayed his mutilated corpse. The Equal Justice Initiative records that Neal’s body was ultimately hung from a tree on the courthouse lawn.

That history matters because Neal had already entered government custody.

The state possessed him. The state had a duty to protect him. Yet a mob reached him anyway.

McGovern’s great contribution was that he examined more than the rope and the tree. He examined the suspect, the community, mob psychology, institutions, justice, local reaction and the national conscience.

That is what an anatomy does. It dissects. Who knew? Who acted? Who failed to act? Who had authority? Who benefited from silence? What happened before the body reached the tree? And what happened afterward?

Nearly a century later, that framework produces an uncomfortable but necessary question:

If historians can anatomize a 1934 lynching, why shouldn’t Americans demand an equally rigorous anatomy of a mysterious hanging in 2026?

WHAT I MEAN BY “SELF-LYNCHING”

I am introducing a deliberately provocative term:

Self-lynching.

“Self-lynching” is not a medical, forensic, or legal classification.

It is my rhetorical term—a paradox designed to expose how extraordinary the imagery is.

Historically, lynching involved someone else inflicting terror and death upon the victim. A “self-lynching,” therefore, describes the modern conclusion sometimes offered when a Black person is said to have voluntarily recreated, alone, perhaps the most recognizable visual symbol of racial terrorism in American history.

Can a Black person die by suicide through hanging?

Absolutely.
That is not disputed.
What I dispute is the idea that the conclusion should outrun the evidence.

If authorities conclude that a Black person discovered suspended from a tree died by suicide, then give the public—and most importantly the family—the anatomy behind that conclusion.

Who owned or purchased the ligature? How was it attached? How did the deceased reach the suspension point? Were there fingerprints or DNA belonging to another person? Were there defensive wounds? What did toxicology establish? What were the lividity and injury patterns? What does cellphone or location data reveal? What do surveillance cameras show? Was there evidence of suicidal intent? Was there a manifesto by the deceased? Were other individuals present? What evidence affirmatively excludes another person’s involvement? Was the scene independently reviewed?

Those are not accusations. Those are forensic questions.

That is anatomy.

CEDRIC TAYUHE DESERVED AN ANATOMY

Cedric Longanga Tayuhe was 36 years old.

The North Carolina Beat reported that Tayuhe was discovered dead at Harris Depot Park in Harrisburg, North Carolina, on June 6, 2026. The publication reported that the Cabarrus County Sheriff’s Office described the circumstances as consistent with suicide and did not dispute the report that he had been found hanging from a tree.

Those words matter.
Consistent with suicide is not synonymous with every reasonable alternative independently excluded.

Again, I am not accusing the deputies investigating Tayuhe’s death of killing him.

I have seen no evidence establishing that.
I am not declaring Tayuhe a confirmed lynching victim.

I am demanding something far more defensible:

Show us the anatomy.

Show the timeline. Show the autopsy. Show the toxicology. Show the scene reconstruction. Show what established voluntary and intentional self-destruction. Show what excluded another person. And explain whether investigators themselves, their relationships, actions, and handling of evidence were independently reviewed. If the evidence overwhelmingly establishes suicide, then let the evidence speak. If it points elsewhere, follow it there.

HISTORY PUTS LAW ENFORCEMENT UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

Black distrust of American law enforcement did not appear from nowhere.

The racial-terror era was not simply a story about ropes, mobs, and trees. It was also a story about institutions—about who protected Black citizens, who did not, who investigated killings, and who escaped punishment.

Recent historical investigations continue to document government complicity. A Maryland state truth-and-reconciliation investigation, for example, examined dozens of lynchings and described ways law enforcement, political institutions and local media enabled racial violence to proceed with impunity.

That history does not establish the guilt of any officer today. But history does establish the legitimacy of institutional scrutiny. And America has seen what lethal abuses of official authority can look like in our own century.

George Floyd died in 2020 beneath the restraint of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder in state court and later pleaded guilty federally to willfully depriving Floyd of his constitutional rights through unreasonable force that resulted in his death. Three other former Minneapolis officers were also convicted on federal civil-rights charges related to their conduct and failure to intervene or provide aid.

Millions watched the video.
I regard Floyd’s killing as carrying some of the public spectacle and terror historically associated with lynching—not because it legally constitutes a historical lynching, but because a Black man’s death at the hands of state authority became a public spectacle witnessed around the world. It was the most publicly viewed death in global history, and it was a 21st-century lynching of a Black man by police.

That comparison is mine.
The underlying homicide and civil-rights violations, however, are matters of judicial record.

So when authorities tell Black America simply to “trust the process,” history answers:

Then show us the process.

THE NUMBERS REQUIRE QUESTIONS, NOT ASSUMPTIONS

CDC data complicate simplistic racial assumptions about suicide.

In 2023, the age-adjusted suicide rate among non-Hispanic Black Americans was 9.1 per 100,000, compared with 17.6 for non-Hispanic White Americans and 23.8 for non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native Americans.

Those numbers cannot tell us how Cedric Tayuhe—or any particular person—died.

Nor do overall suicide rates tell us which method an individual might use.

But they reinforce why individual deaths should be investigated scientifically rather than interpreted through assumptions.

The question is not:
Do Black people die by suicide?
Of course they do.
The question is:

How do you know this Black person did?

DON’T NORMALIZE THE TREE

This is where McGovern’s Anatomy of a Lynching becomes more than a history book.

Claude Neal’s death in 1934 and Cedric Tayuhe’s death in 2026 cannot responsibly be declared equivalent.

Neal was lynched. That is a historical fact.

Tayuhe has not been established as a lynching victim. Authorities have publicly characterized the circumstances as consistent with suicide.

But the image of a Black body suspended from a tree inevitably carries history into the present.

In 1934, America eventually had to answer the following:

Who lynched Claude Neal?
In 2026, Americans are entitled to ask the following:

What evidence proves Cedric Tayuhe put himself there?

And I would add another question:
Who investigated the investigators?
Proverbs 18:13 warns against reaching conclusions before hearing the matter.

John 7:24 commands us to judge with righteous judgment.

Deuteronomy 16:20 commands us to pursue justice. Those obligations apply to activists. They apply to journalists. They apply to me. And they apply to law enforcement. I will not automatically label every Black person found hanging from a tree a lynching victim. Evidence matters too much for that.

But I equally refuse to normalize what I call the mythology of the “self-lynching”—a historically extraordinary image reduced to an ordinary explanation without extraordinary transparency.

James R. McGovern gave America the Anatomy of a Lynching.

Nearly a century after Claude Neal, perhaps America now needs another anatomy:

The anatomy of how investigators determine that the Black body in the tree put itself there.

That anatomy must include the victim. The evidence. The scene. The medical examiner. The witnesses. The technology.

And yes—the law enforcement officers and institutions entrusted with telling us what happened.

Cedric Tayuhe deserves that rigor. His family deserves that rigor. Every family deserves it.

Don’t give us a convenient word.

Give us the evidence.

Why is this trooper still at work patrolling Arkansas highways and streets? 288 hours ago, he assaulted an 18-year-old Arkansas woman who cried for her mother on the ground.

A grown, armed Arkansas state trooper took her to the pavement and punched her in the face. If you are quiet, you are complicit.

And today the most troubling questions may be these:

Why is Trooper Moisses Arellano reportedly still on duty? So we empower physical assaults by law enforcement now? The state of Arkansas is silent; its complicity means that it is okay to curse out an unarmed, non-threatening, 18-year-old young lady subdued on the ground. Are "attitudes" against law and order, and will future violators be arrested in Arkansas? Does that depend on color or gender?

On August 1, 2026, Arkansas State Police Trooper Moisses Arellano stopped Alisa Hackett, 18, near Manila, Arkansas, after reporting that she was traveling 71 mph in a 60-mph zone. The encounter escalated from a traffic stop into an arrest. Police video shows Arellano taking Hackett to the ground and striking her in the face. His own use-of-force report acknowledges delivering a closed-fist strike to the left side of her face, which he said was intended to gain compliance.

Hackett can be heard crying, asking what she had done and repeatedly asking to call her mother.

After she protested that he could not punch her in the face, Arellano responded, “Said who?” He also threatened to strike her again if she did not turn over.

America, watch the video. This is not simply a Black issue. This is not merely a civil-rights issue.

This is a human-rights issue.

GOVERNOR SANDERS: WHERE ARE YOU?

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, this happened under the authority of the state of Arkansas. Why is this Arkansas State Trooper still on the job after physically assaulting a young woman unjustly in your state? You are the first woman governor of Arkansas. What is your official position on these actions? If you come up as a candidate for president or even run for re-election, this will come up again. Please respond to this statewide national alert, Madame Governor of Arkansas.

Attorney General Tim Griffin, Arkansas citizens have constitutional rights whether they are polite, frightened, argumentative, young, old, Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, Arab, or White.

Arkansas State Police Director Colonel Mike Hagar: This is now a test of leadership.

And Jim Hinkle, chairman of the Arkansas State Police Commission, along with Vice-Chairman Ken Reeves and the entire commission: Arkansans deserve more than institutional silence. A meeting will be called, and we invite you to come hear the people out.

Official state records identify Hagar as ASP director and Hinkle as chairman of the State Police Commission. Governor Sanders and Attorney General Griffin remain Arkansas's current governor and attorney general.

This administration should explain why a trooper whose own report admits punching an 18-year-old woman remains entrusted with state police authority while serious questions concerning his conduct are unresolved.

The NAACP has already called for an independent investigation, release of the unedited recordings, administrative leave for Arellano pending investigation, review of use-of-force practices and examination of racial disparities in ASP traffic stops.

Those demands are not anti-police.
They are pro-accountability.

WHO WAS THE OTHER TROOPER?

There is another question Arkansas State Police must answer.

Who was the other trooper Arellano consulted? This is public record and a freedom of information act is forthcoming.

Reporting and Arellano's account indicate that during the encounter he communicated with another trooper and learned Hackett had been stopped previously. According to Hackett's attorneys, that conversation helped influence Arellano's decision to arrest her rather than simply issue citations.

The public deserves the other officer's name.

Release the complete audio. Release the communications. Explain whether that officer was a peer, senior trooper or supervisor. Explain exactly what was said before Arellano changed the direction of this encounter.

I have not found a reliable public record identifying that second trooper. ASP should identify that officer rather than leaving journalists and citizens to speculate.

Accountability does not stop with the hand that threw the punch. It includes anyone whose instructions, encouragement, supervision, or failure to intervene contributed to an unconstitutional use of force—if the evidence establishes that contribution.

AN “ATTITUDE” IS NOT A CRIME

Hackett has now filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Arellano. Her complaint alleges that the trooper said he was going to “tune” her up because of her attitude. That is an allegation in active litigation, and Arellano is entitled to respond to it in court.

But if authenticated recordings establish that statement, it should disturb every American who drives a car.

Having an attitude is not a crime. Questioning police is not, by itself, justification for violence. An officer's bruised ego is not probable cause. And contempt for someone's tone is not a constitutional basis for punishment on the shoulder of an Arkansas highway.

The Supreme Court established in Rodriguez v. United States that police generally may not extend a completed traffic stop into an unrelated investigation without independent reasonable suspicion. Exactly how Rodriguez applies to Hackett's encounter will ultimately depend on the complete factual record, but her lawsuit raises serious Fourth Amendment questions that deserve judicial review—not institutional dismissal.

GOOD POLICING REQUIRES GOOD COPS TO SPEAK

Social-media commentator Marquez Miller, whose public Facebook post helped inspire this column, raised an uncomfortable point: What does silence from other law-enforcement professionals communicate when controversial force is captured on video?

That question matters nationally. I do not support attacking all law-enforcement officers. I do not believe every trooper, deputy, police officer, federal agent, or ranger is corrupt, yet too many are. But good law enforcement cannot demand public trust while refusing to confront bad policing within its own ranks.

Police officers tell communities: If you see something, say something.

The same rule must apply inside the squad room. A badge cannot become a fraternity shield.

THIS IS THE CANCER

America debates “defund the police” endlessly.

Perhaps we should spend more time discussing professionalizing the police and law enforcement. Raise hiring standards. Improve psychological screening. Train officers in de-escalation. Reward restraint rather than domination. Remove personnel who repeatedly demonstrate they cannot distinguish lawful authority from personal ego.

Law enforcement grants ordinary human beings extraordinary power: firearms, handcuffs, arrest authority, physical force, and the power to temporarily take away someone's freedom. That requires higher emotional intelligence, not lower standards. No officer should believe disrespect permits him to become violent. No 18-year-old daughter should have to cry for her mother or father while wondering whether the armed government employee on top of her is going to strike her again while cursing.

ACCOUNTABILITY STARTS AT THE TOP

Governor Sanders, Attorney General Griffin, Colonel Hagar and Chairman Hinkle:

Arkansas is watching. America is watching. Place the officer on unpaid administrative leave while an independent investigation occurs, not by the ASP. Identify the second trooper involved in the communications. Release the complete, unedited recordings. Review the use-of-force decision. Examine whether the arrest complied with constitutional requirements.

Make the findings public. And if policy permits what America watched on that recording, then investigate the policy too. Supporting police does not require supporting everything a police officer does. I have family members who served and were in law enforcement. I support law enforcement, but I don’t support corrupt, racist, sexist, or dishonest law enforcement on any level. Quite the opposite.

The quickest way to destroy respect for law enforcement is to teach citizens that a badge protects the officer more effectively than the Constitution protects the citizen. Alisa Hackett deserves due process. Trooper Arellano deserves due process.

And Arkansas citizens deserve something equally fundamental:

the truth. This is bigger than Arkansas. It is about whether America will be governed by the rule of law—or the rule of whoever happens to be wearing the badge.

Resource:
The same video footage and audio that have Americans traumatically and emotionally on edge. Let’s see and hear the entire video and audio. When you make beds like this, you may have to sleep in one. I will give a blanket of grace, Arkansas State Police. Grace is something that your troopers didn’t give to Ms. Hackett. Sleep tight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edmond W. Davis is a social historian, media strategist, professor, and documentary host. Davis is the founder of the National HBCU Black Wall Street Career Fest. A native of Philadelphia, PA, he, his wife, and his son currently live in the Little Rock, Arkansas, area. Davis is committed to cultural empowerment and educational equity through storytelling and civic engagement. In 2026, Davis was a grand marshal at the 38th Annual African American History Month Celebration Parade, the largest in the U.S. during Black Histo