Early on the morning of March 16, 1922, George Tompkins left his aunt and uncle’s home in Indianapolis for the last time.
Tompkins’ family said the 19-year-old Black man, a recent migrant from Kentucky who worked at a glass factory, had left in good spirits. After Tompkins was found dead near the White River with a noose around his neck and his hands tied behind his back, his body slumped against the sapling whose branches held the rope, the Marion County coroner told reporters that “Tompkins could not have hanged himself.” His family found no suicide note.
But Indianapolis police detectives claimed Tompkins had killed himself, and the coroner reported Tompkins’ official manner of death as suicide…