This news from Mississippi: State investigators and a nationally recognized pathologist said yesterday there was no foul play in the hanging death of a black teenager which had prompted accusations that he’d been lynched. The death of seventeen-year-old Raynard Johnson, who was found hanging from a pecan tree outside his rural home on June 16th, was self-inflicted, at least says Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York City, who worked on inquiries into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King. Mississippi state investigators “explored all rumors and exhausted all leads,” said Colonel Claiborne of the Mississippi Highway Patrol. He went on to say, “Everything we’ve checked shows no evidence of foul play. There was no other person involved in the death of Raynard Johnson.”

Jesse Jackson and the Johnson family have maintained that the honor student was killed by racists, angry over his relationship with two white girls. Jackson has labeled the death a lynching and questioned the ability of authorities to investigate the death fairly.