Tell-It Report: Colin Kaepernick to Fund Independent Autopsy For Trey Reed by Michael Harriot
The Delta State University student was found hanging from a tree on campus on Sept. 15. Read on Substack
In Gullah Geechee communities, a “tell-it” was a designated lookout, community warning system and the most trusted source for news and information. The Tell-It Report is ContrabandCamp’s weekly roundup of the Black stories that deserve more attention — from politics to entertainment.
Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp will fund the independent autopsy for Demartravion “Trey” Reed, who was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi. The state medical examiner has ruled his death a suicide.
The Black unemployment rate has increased by 1.5% in the last three months.
The Justice Department has quietly scrubbed from its website a study that shows that right-wing extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group.
Read the full stories below:
Colin Kaepernick will fund Trey Reed’s autopsy after officials initially called it suicide
Activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is funding an independent autopsy for Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the 21-year-old Delta State student who was found hanging from a tree on the Cleveland, Miss., campus on Sept. 15.
The Cleveland Police Department released a statement on Sept. 18 stating that the initial autopsy, conducted by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, ruled Reed’s death a suicide. Days prior, Delta State’s Director of Public Safety Mike Peeler said that there was no evidence of foul play. Reed’s family challenged their findings and is demanding answers.
On Friday, Ben Crump announced that Kaepernick’s “Know Your Rights Camp Autopsy Initiative” would be covering the cost of a secondary autopsy.
“Trey’s death evoked the collective memory of a community that has suffered a historic wound over many, many years and many, many deaths,” Crump said in a press release. “Peace will come only by getting to the truth. We thank Colin Kaepernick for supporting this grieving family and the cause of justice and truth.”
The statement read that the family will initiate the process once Reed’s body is released by the state medical examiner.
Reed’s body was found hanging on the Mississippi university’s campus, where nearly half of the student body is Black. The case evoked memories of the violent history of the Jim Crow South.
Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said he “condemn[s] the rumors circulating regarding his death.”
“We are getting mixed information. We are hearing everything on the media. We just want answers and truth because he was a young man I really loved,” Reed’s uncle, Jerry Reed, told Fox 13.
Family attorney Vanessa J. Jones told the local outlet prior to his death that Reed had spent time happy and with his family.
“He was here with his family. He was joyful and loving as ever. That is what he is being remembered for,” Jones said. “When he went back to Delta State University, he was his joyful self. So, the question is, ‘What happened?’”
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson is demanding a federal investigation.
“We must leave no stone unturned in the search for answers,” the Mississippi representative said. “While the details of this case are still emerging, we cannot ignore Mississippi’s painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans.”
Black unemployment continues to surge
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the Black unemployment rate has hit record highs since October 2021, according to the Associated Press.
In the last three months, the unemployment rate for Black Americans has gone up by 1.5% to 7.5%—twice that of the rate for white Americans—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bloomberg calls this “a rare development outside of recessions.” Researchers have attributed the spike to a slower labor market affecting Black employees first, as well as the president’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
Reports of the more than 319,000 Black women who’ve become unemployed at the top of the year became an early indicator of the overall economic decline of Black communities. Their unemployment rate spiked from 5.1% in March to 6.7% in August.
“The most vulnerable people tend to get laid off first, and unfortunately, that tends to be Black Americans, and that’s something that is very disturbing in and of itself,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at accounting firm KPMG US, told CNN.
Experts note that these numbers can indicate looming economic troubles for the entire country. Employers added an average of 29,000 jobs each month over the past three months. That’s a drastic decline from the 209,000 average over the same time period in 2024, Bloomberg reports.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the outlet that Trump predicts that recent tax cuts and immigrant deportations will add jobs for Black Americans.
“President Trump is implementing the same America First economic agenda that delivered historic job and wage growth — including record-low Black unemployment rates — in his first term,” she said. “The passage of the Working Families Tax Cuts will unleash economic growth through tax reform, deregulation, and incentives for job creation in the private sector that will benefit all Americans.”
Alexsis Rodgers, political director at the Black to the Future Action Fund, told the AP that this is a “new era.”
“There are people who obviously believed his promises, that Trump was going to do something about the cost of eggs, the cost of housing,” she said. “They’ve seen the focus instead is on ICE raids and downsizing the government.”
The DOJ quietly removed a study showing that right-wing extremists have the biggest hand in domestic terrorism
The Department of Justice recently removed a study from its website showing that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, according to The Hill.
The study, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, stated that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” Jason Paladino first reported that the study had been scrubbed from the National Institute for Justice’s online library on Sept. 12.
The removal occurred just days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. In the wake of his death, Trump said, “The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, claiming “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.
However, there has been little evidence to suggest that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old lead suspect in Kirk’s killing, identifies as a leftist or that his actions were motivated by political ideology. There’s more of an indication that Robinson and Kirk had been among similar circles of internet culture, according to The New Yorker.
The study, which can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine, used data from the National Institute of Justice. It found that far-right extremists “committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.” The authors also state, “In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
Similarly, ContrabandCamp’s Michael Harriot showed that political violence is much more likely to come from the right than the left.
The NIJ study points directly to online chat forums as a source that reinforces their beliefs on gun rights, conspiracy theories, hate-based views and more. “Users grew more ideological and radical as other users reinforced their ideas and connected their ideas to those from other forums,” the study reads.
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