Civil rights organization JULIAN is the first to document modern-day lynchings (MDLs) in  the 21st century, as a follow-up to Ida B. Wells’ A Red Record. The report reveals new  evidence on how recent lynchings have been covered up across seven states.

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February 18, 2026 – Civil rights organization JULIAN today released a report exposing the  practice of modern-day lynchings across the deep South over the last 25 years –  challenging the source that the last lynching in the U.S. occurred in 1981.  

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The report serves as a follow-up to Ida B. Wells’ historic A RED RECORD, which centralized  and documented lynchings in 1895. A CRIMSON RECORD examines more than 70  modern-day lynchings across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee,  and Texas since 2000, and over 150 total fatal hate crimes and suspicious deaths during the  same period targeting Black, Brown, immigrant, indigenous and LGBTQ+ communities.  

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“A CRIMSON RECORD exposes the long-buried truth about modern-day lynchings, calling  these crimes exactly what they are despite systemic attempts to erase and deny them,”  said JULIAN founder Jill Collen Jefferson. “Lynching has never disappeared — it has  adapted, hidden behind silence and indifference. Today, as in the past, it survives in the  shadows. If we are to end this brutality and secure justice for the victims, their families, and  the communities left to carry the pain, we must confront it openly and speak its name  without fear.”  

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Last fall, the death of Trey Reed, a 25-year-old man found hanging from a tree on his college  campus of Delta State University in Mississippi, raised questions across the country about  how many brutal deaths, particularly of Black men, are classified as suicides. A Crimson  Record shows that such cases are not only all too common but are on the rise.

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Modern-day lynchings (MDLs), as defined by JULIAN, are discriminatory killings carried out  by more than one person for an alleged offense with or without legal trial or due process.  Like lynchings of the past, they are different than a hate crime against an individual in that  the intention behind them is to spread widespread terror in order to uphold systems of  supremacy, and often involve spectacle.  

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The new report reveals, for example, that in the town of Flowood, Mississippi, adjacent to  two of the state’s “sundown” towns, Pearl and Brandon, Black men have been disappearing  around the same time every few years. A number of victims across the deep South were  also allegedly involved in relationships with white women, such as Willie Andrew Jones Jr.,  Raynard Johnson, and most recently, 29-year-old Trevontae Shubert-Helton, who was  found hanging from a tree in a 90% white town in 2024.  

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“These cases force us to confront an uncomfortable truth: supremacy is still enforced in our  communities through terror — not as a relic of the past, but as a living, evolving practice,”  said Jefferson. “Many would rather confine this violence to history books, but that denial is  exactly what allows it to continue. The extraordinary effort to obscure modern-day  lynchings — more than other acts of hate — reveals a deeper fear: that naming them would  expose how deeply this violence is rooted in our present.”  

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Importantly, the reason that few people are aware of the prevalence of MDLs is because of a  deliberate system of immediately classifying the deaths as suicides to force an atmosphere  of silence or so-called “privacy” around the case, followed by shoddy investigations, faulty  autopsies, and the exclusion of families. Even when independent autopsies are carried out  later — such as Frederick Jermaine Carter, whose autopsy was carried out by the same  independent pathologist as Trey Reed— their results are ignored, and the initial designation  of suicide can be impossible to overcome.  

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‍A CRIMSON RECORD reveals brand new evidence in a number of so-called suicides  that JULIAN uncovered through its own investigations. For example, a police investigator  urged the organization to look further into the death of Leon Hayes, who in 2021 was found  bloodless and decapitated in his yard. Authorities claimed his small dog had chewed off his  head. But an independent medical examiner found instead that the cut separating his head  was actually straight, like something done by a sharp object in a swift motion. In another  case, JULIAN reveals that an independent medical examiner formally determined that Willie  Andrew Jones Jr. had been lynched, a 21-year-old Black man who was found hanging from a  tree in Scott County, MS, in 2018.

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Unlike in lynchings of the past, however, today individuals are radicalized outside of formal  hate groups. Given the escalation in political division, online radicalization and racialized  rhetoric, JULIAN makes clear that MDLs are only expected to increase. Victims today  include immigrants, particularly notable in Texas, transgender women and other frequently  targeted communities. Nearly one-third of the victims of the total deaths examined in the  report are Black transgender women.  

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“As more people become vulnerable to radicalization, the threat of modern-day lynching  grows more dangerous and more emboldened,” said Jefferson. “We cannot afford to treat  this terror as inevitable. Change is not only possible — it is necessary. When we dismantle  the practices and policies that conceal how often these crimes occur and shield  perpetrators from accountability, we do more than pursue justice for the fallen — we  disrupt the cycle of brutality and prevent it from claiming more lives.”  

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The report includes proposed reforms on how to investigate MDLs, including how coroners  can distinguish homicides from suicides, and protocol for conducting psychological  autopsies with possible MDLs, a critical step that investigations often neglect and must  incorporate. JULIAN offers an overhauled investigative protocol and a strategic  implementation plan designed to guide law enforcement, policymakers and civil rights  organizations in responding to suspected MDLs.  

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JULIAN also raises several policy recommendations, among them strengthening the  “toothless” federal Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act by adding requirements for handling  suspected MDLs, and support for additional legislation.  

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Already, there has been momentum to adopt some changes that JULIAN has proposed. In  Mississippi, for example, JULIAN supported the introduction of a statewide anti-lynching bill,  and the organization continues to partner with other state and federal lawmakers on  actualizing its suggested reforms.  

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“This report sounds a critical alarm on the persistence of lynching in Mississippi and across  the South, but make no mistake: this should serve as a call to action for the nation at large,”  said Kabir Karriem, Mississippi State Representative for the 41st District and Chairman of the  Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus, who worked with JULIAN to introduce anti-lynching  legislation in the state. “It is the responsibility of all states to prioritize meaningful legislation  and policy changes that protect people of color and marginalized groups. We are proud to  stand alongside JULIAN in the tireless fight for legal accountability against lynchings here in  Mississippi, and we won't rest until justice is served everywhere."

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Visit julianfreedom.org/database-and-resources to view the report and learn more about  JULIAN’s growing database documenting MDLs around the country.

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About JULIAN  

Founded in 2020 and developed in Harvard’s Innovation Lab, JULIAN’s mission is to end  caste systems in America. JULIAN does this through legal advocacy, organizing, policy, and  innovation in order to exact justice, foster equality, and advance the doctrines of civil and  human rights law. We do this to protect and uplift the voices of those on the bottom rungs  of the American caste system. Our intention is to revive the spirit, effectiveness, strategies,  and impact of the civil rights movement—updated for the realities of today and the urgency  of tomorrow. JULIAN works to tear down six of the eight pillars of caste. Additionally we use  innovation and community organizing to advance community-identified and directed policy  initiatives that build democracy and power. We work in small towns and rural communities,  and our work impacts Black, brown, indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and individuals with disabilities.  JULIAN is the first and only organization of its kind that centers innovation and creativity  while investigating, litigating, and mounting civil rights campaigns to end lynchings and tear  apart systems of caste, attacking not only “discrimination” but discrimination’s roots.  JULIAN is not a response to the future of civil and human rights. JULIAN is the future.