There are deaths that receive immediate investigation and there are deaths that receive calls for investigation from civil rights activists, a $50,000 reward from Al Sharpton, and references to Mississippi’s “rife history with racial relations,” and the death of Nolan Wells, a Black teenager whose body was found in the water off Horn Island, Mississippi, after he spent the Fourth of July on the island with a group of mostly white friends who returned to shore without him, is the second kind.
Wells spent July 4 on Horn Island, a barrier island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast accessible only by boat, with a group of mostly white friends. He did not return with them. His body was subsequently found in the water, per HuffPost’s confirmed live updates from Monday. The circumstances of his disappearance, why he did not leave with the group, what happened between his last confirmed sighting and the discovery of his body, and what the group knew when they returned without him are the questions that civil rights activists and his family have been pressing Mississippi authorities to answer more thoroughly than the initial investigation addressed.
Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a passionate eulogy at Wells’s funeral on Monday, per HuffPost, and offered $50,000 for any new information regarding his death, which is the specific dollar amount Sharpton and the National Action Network deploy when they want to communicate that the official investigation is insufficient and that information is being withheld or inadequately pursued. Sharpton’s involvement produces national attention. National attention produces the specific condition where Mississippi authorities are being watched by people who are not from Mississippi and are familiar with what has happened when Black people died in proximity to water in Mississippi and the investigation concluded there was nothing more to find.
Mississippi’s history with racial violence is not a reference that requires footnoting for most readers of American history, which is why civil rights activists cited it specifically when calling for a more thorough investigation, and which is why the citation produced the coverage that Nolan Wells’s death might not otherwise have received beyond the local Mississippi Gulf Coast news cycle.
The $50,000 reward is active. The investigation is ongoing. Nolan Wells was spending the Fourth of July with his friends.
When a Black teenager doesn’t come back from an island with the mostly white group he arrived with and the investigation requires outside pressure to continue, what exactly is being investigated?
Sources
HuffPost: Live Updates — Sharpton offers $50,000 in Nolan Wells case
HuffPost: The Story We’ve Been Given About Nolan Wells Doesn’t Add Up — And We Cannot Look Away
HuffPost: Family Of Black Teen Found Dead After Boat Trip Agree To Inspect His Cellphone With DA
