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No Ifs, No Buts: This was a Mississippi Lynching in 2022

“Me and the owner of this company are not seeing eye to eye Mama … But if anything happen to me, he’s responsible for it.”

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Screenshot from an NBC News video regarding the case of Rasheem Carter. (Posted to YouTube on March 14, 2023.)

The 2022 murder of Rasheem Ryelle Carter, 25, in rural Mississippi, is one of the ugliest, most sadistic, nauseating crimes that has been reported in the 21st century. Indeed, the sheer barbarity of what happened to Carter seems like it belongs in another era, but it happened a mere seven months ago.

On Oct. 1, Rasheem phoned his mother in distress, telling her that he was being followed by three truckloads of white men in Taylorsville, a small town in Mississippi. He reported that the men were hurling racial slurs at him. One month later, Carter’s skeletonized remains were found in a wooded area near Taylorsville; he had been decapitated and dismembered. But despite this grisly scenario — reeking of an old-fashioned Mississippi lynching — the local police immediately claimed that there was “no reason” to suspect foul play.

Rasheem Carter feared for his life — and with good reason.

Contrary to popular belief, lynchings in Mississippi and other states have not disappeared in modern times; they have simply gone underground. The local…

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Clare Xanthos, PhD
Clare Xanthos, PhD

Written by Clare Xanthos, PhD

RESEARCHER. AUTHOR. WRITER. Interests: racial equity, social justice, cultural identity. Co-Editor: "Social Determinants of Health among African-American Men."

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