Death of Black lynching victim ruled homicide a century after murder
Indianapolis officials have at last acknowledged the death of a Black man 100 years ago was a lynching and not a suicide as previously recorded.
In March 1922, 19-year-old George Tompkins was found hanging from a sapling in the Indiana city's Riverside Park with his hands tied behind his back.
Although the coroner that examined Tompkins said that he could not have hanged himself, suicide was listed as the cause of death on his death certificate.
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That was corrected Saturday, with homicide listed on a newly issued death certificate.
"We will bring justice to something that was unconscionable to me; that 100 years ago something like this could have happened" said Marion County deputy chief coroner Alfie McGinty, according to local station WTHR.
McGinty displayed a new copy of the teen's death certificate during a memorial service, which included placing a headstone at Tompkins' previously unmarked grave.
"We are proud to be a part of this history some 100 years later, and we will remember George Tompkins."
Advocates from the Indiana Remembrance Coalition, a community group that works to address the state's history of lynching, spearheaded the effort to shed light on Tompkins's slaying and to correct his cause of death.
"Even in the Black community, most people have never heard about this chapter in our city's history," said Clete Ladd, a member of the Indiana Remembrance Coalition. "We need to know these things...because the past has shaped the present."
At least 4,400 Black Americans were lynched in the U.S. during the period between the Civil War and World War II, according to report from the Equal Justice Initiative. Congress did not pass legislation making lynching as a federal crime until 2020, and only this year voted to make it a federal hate crime.
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