A young black mother was brutally murdered in Mississippi last month, but the Associated Press seems more interested in browbeating Americans about racism than in finding justice.
On Monday, the AP published a video on YouTube that uses the horrific murder of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four, as a pretext to revisit the history of racially motivated lynching.
‘I don’t think this was racist. I think this was something very personal.’
“The death of Tasia Fortune, a black Mississippi woman who was found hanging from a tree, has brought up distressing memories of the grim history of lynchings in the United States South,” Sarah Jones-Smith of the AP says to open the video.
“For many black people, the imagery of a rope and noose evokes the legacy of lynching and vigilante violence against black people in the U.S. and brings deep pain and trauma,” Jones-Smith continues.
The fact that Fortune was found hanging from a tree in the back yard of a vacant Jackson home on August 3 appears to be the only tie between her murder and previous racial lynchings.
In fact, a black man has already been identified as the suspected murderer. On September 11, police arrested 51-year-old Jarques “Jock” Ratliff and charged him with murder in connection with Fortune’s death.
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Additionally, no motive for the murder has yet been determined. Ratliff and Fortune did have an “association” with one another, Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney confirmed, according to the Clarion Ledger, though the exact nature of that “association” is unclear.
Brackney noted that the investigation into the murder is ongoing and that other arrests may be coming.
Finally, while the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office has ruled Fortune’s death a homicide, no official cause of death has yet been announced. An affidavit claimed only that the suspect used a “black cable cord” to tie Fortune to the tree, the Ledger reported.
The AP was fully aware of most of these details regarding Fortune’s case since it reported them in an article dated September 11. The AP also released a video on Wednesday admitting that a “black man was charged with murder in this case.”
Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, told the AP she does not believe that racial malice was the motive behind the murder. Spivey claimed she and Fortune’s father endured racial attacks in Kentucky during their mixed-race romantic relationship.
“I don’t think this was racist,” Spivey said. “I think this was something very personal, very personal.”
Spivey said she does not know Ratliff but has asked Fortune’s friends whether they recognize him.
The AP shared the lynching history lesson video on X Monday and was soon slapped with a community note that “a black man with an association to Tasia Fortune” had been arrested. An AP news report was included as one of the sources for the community note.
Folks at the AP are not the only ones fretting about the circumstances of Fortune’s death and the emotionally charged topic of lynchings. Police Chief Brackney even alluded to the issue during her press conference about Ratliff’s arrest.
“We understand the questions and the desire for answers, given Mississippi’s history,” Brackney said on September 11. “We understand that this case is being viewed through a broader lens, a global lens, and we do not dismiss those concerns. We are taking them seriously.”
Attorney Toney Baldwin, who is representing Ratliff, described his client as “innocent” and asked the public and the media not to “prejudge” the case until all the evidence comes out, according to the Ledger.
The AP did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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