A Black man's death was ruled a suicide a century ago. A coroner now says it was a lynching
CNN
George Tompkins left his home on the morning of March 16, 1922, but the 19-year-old never returned. That afternoon, the Black man's body was found hanging from a sapling -- his hands bound together at Riverside Park in Indianapolis, according to the Indiana Remembrance Coalition.
Now, a century later, Alfarena McGinty, the chief deputy coroner of Marion County, has ruled Tompkins' death as a lynching, not a suicide, after reviewing his case.
Dr. Paul Robinson, Marion County coroner in 1922, saw Tompkins' body soon after police reported it. "There could be no question that the man had been murdered and his body then tied to the tree," he said in local media reports at the time.
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