No news story has African Americans more riled up than the death of Nolan Wells, the young African American student-athlete who lifeless body was pulled from the waters of Horn Island in Mississippi the Monday after he and his friends gathered there for a boating trip on the fourth of July. There are few media outlets, traditional and social that this news story has not saturated thus the details of which will not be rehashed here.
The widely circulated photo of Wells flanked on each side by his white male friends has created a firestorm of suspicion within the African American community, many of whom suspect foul-play. Not everyone however within the Black community is of that opinion.
Many in the world of politics and media have weighed in on the matter. One African American male sports talk show host is convinced that the African American community is hoping clues will lead the authorities to conclude that Wells died a violent death at the hands of his white friends. In the words of this Black male talk show host “the Black community is rooting” for this outcome. That it is hard for some within the African American community, especially those of a certain age group, not to view the disappearance and death of Wells through a racial lens is difficult for some like the Black sports talk show host to wrap his mind around.
If Black folks are suspicious, there is good reason to be. History has conditioned African Americans to think the worst in situations like that. A Black male is last seen in the company of a group of white males only to later turn up dead. This is not unprecedented. That this occurred in the state of Mississippi of all places has undoubtedly resulted in a heightened level of suspicion. To this day there are cold cases involving the disappearance and deaths of Black Mississippians that go back several decades.
While there is no evidence that young Wells’s death is the result of something nefarious that does little to assuage some peoples’ concerns. It is possible that Wells could have very well drowned an accidental death. If this is found to be the case, the gravity of Wells’s loss won’t be any less heavy and the pain experienced by his parents, friends, and loved ones won’t be any less piercing. Hence, the idea that Blacks are hoping for or “rooting for” a different outcome is ridiculous. African Americans are rooting for no such thing; they are simply bracing themselves for the worst and given the social and political climate who can blame them.
The fact of the matter is when it comes to Blacks turning up missing only to be found days, weeks or months later floating in lakes, rivers, streams, shallow graves, and earthen dams, the state of Mississippi has a disproportionate share of such stories. Given the state’s ignominious racial history, the absence of suspicion on the part of African Americans would seem a most unnatural reaction.
Judson L. Jeffries PhD, MPH, is Professor of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University.