His father found he on a branch of a tree outside of his home. Law enforcement agencies and whites say it was a suicide.

Black and other white folks alike say it was a clear case of a lynching pure and simple. There was an intense investigation going on by federal authorities. There were marches and a national dialogued fueled by Rev. Jesse Jackson.

While watching the movie Boycott on HBO I was reminded that the south is experiencing a new renaissance of racism and attacks on black males.

When this story broke last year, I watched the BET Tavis Smiley show where there was a panel discussing this issue.

His sister and brother, brave souls, were there, a woman radio DJ from Hattiesburg, Mississippi and Rev. Jackson.

This young man had a promising future, was a bright student, popular with students of all colors, and was looking forward to his summer and his future at college. His misdeed, if you will, was that he had been dating white girls.

This is still Mississippi, where Emmitt Till was killed for supposedly whistling at a white woman.

There had been threats, hate graffiti, suspicious comings and goings for weeks. Moreover there were more cases of mysterious deaths of blacks classified as suicides. It was just too pat.

A caller, a young woman, made the statement that when will our young men learn that the white woman is not the prize?

It got very quiet and then Rev. Jackson stated that we must not allow anyone to dictate who we socialize with.

Why is it we can assimilate in every aspect but when it comes to male/female relationships does the problem become out of control?

My co-worker, a friend of mine, from the same county in Mississippi where this incident occurred, was very distressed about the whole matter. Her sister, a college professor in Louisiana wrote an editorial that was published in the local paper.

She talked about the stigma that Mississippi has in regards to race relations, in particularly the number of lynchings that have occurred there.

Are the days of Mississippi Burning over? Another co-worker here at work used to jokingly ask "Do they still lynch us in Mississippi?" My friend used to be annoyed with those kinds of questions. Now, she can only shake her head.

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