Lennon Lacy CONTINUES
The Lacy’s were left with the
impression that, for the district
attorney, Jon David, and his
investigating team, the question of
what had happened to Lennon Lacy
was all but settled just five days after
the event. But it wasn’t settled for
them.
As the Rev William Barber, head
of the NC NAACP, put it at a recent
memorial service for Lennon Lacy
held at the family’s church, the First
Baptist in Bladenboro, “Don’t ask
these parents to bury their 17-year-old
son and then act as though everything
is normal. Don’t chastise them for
asking the right questions. All they
want is the truth.”
terrible image of “strange fruit” will
hover over this town for as long as
the truth about Lennon Lacy’s death
remains uncertain.
That is paradoxical, because Lacy
had joined a multiracial youth group
across town at the Galeed Baptist
Church where he went for weekly
services and basketball ministry, and
his friends were black and white, in
almost equal measure.
For several months before he died, he
was also in a relationship with a white
woman, Michelle Brimhall, who lives
directly opposite the Lacy family
home. The liaison with Brimhall
raised eyebrows because, at 31, she
was almost twice his age. (The age of
consent in North Carolina is 16.)
Lennon did not take his own life. “No,
Lennon did not kill himself. He loved
his mother so much; he would never
put her through that. I want to know
who did it. I want them to suffer.”
About a week after Lacy died, his
family, with the help of the NC
NAACP and their own lawyer, put
together a list of questions and
concerns that they presented to the
district attorney. First, there was
the overriding sense that Lennon
was simply not the kind of boy to
harm himself. He had no history
of mental illness or depression, and
was so focused on his future it was
inconceivable he would intentionally
cut it short.
Then there were those facial marks
Barber was careful to stress that
that truth was elusive – no one
knows what happened to Lennon
Lacy, he said, beyond the bald
facts of his death. If a full and
thorough investigation concluded
that the teenager had indeed
taken his own life, then the Lacy
family would accept that.
But Barber also talked about the
chilling thought that lingered,
otherwise unmentioned, over
the scores of black and white
people attending the packed
memorial. “The image of a black
boy hanging from a rope is in the
souls of all of us,” he told them.
“It is in the DNA of America. In
2014, our greatest prayer is that
this was not a lynching.”
In Bladenboro, a town of just 1,700
people – 80% white, 18% black – the
bitter legacy of the South’s racial
history is never far from the surface.
The African Americans have a
nickname for the place: they call it
“Crackertown” in reference to its
longstanding domination by the white
population.
The events of August 29th have
become entangled in that historical
narrative, inevitably perhaps in a
state in which 86 black people were
lynched between 1882 and 1968.
While America debates whether it
is moving into a post-racial age, the
truth in Bladenboro is that the past is
very much here and now, and that the
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“Everybody was going in on me
because he was 17 and I am 31,”
Brimhall told the Guardian. “We told
people we weren’t seeing each other so
they would stop giving us trouble.”
The Lacy family said that Brimhall
had