Ms Rachel Urges Followers to Listen to Black Community Amid String of Hanging Deaths

Children’s educator Ms Rachel, whom many toddlers like to listen to, raised a controversial issue on her social media. In her opinion, people should trust Black Americans who believe there are hanging deaths among the black people in the South that haven’t been properly investigated.

“Listen to the Black community: Black people don’t hang themselves from trees,” Rachel Accurso wrote in her post on Threads on Tuesday.

Rachel Accurso, a 43-year-old former teacher whose YouTube Channel, where she sings and teaches babies and kids, has more than 18 million subscribers, said the same thing on her Instagram account the same day, receiving lots of likes.

“Just in 2026. Also what the press did to Dr Jason Arday.” “My heart is with the Black community. Please be an ally. You don’t have to be perfect. But you need to listen, uplift, speak out and show up.”

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The statements of Rachel Accurso occur after the death of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old woman. Fortune’s lifeless body was found on August 3, hanging in a tree behind a vacant property on Road of Remembrance in Jackson, Mississippi. At 9:05 p.m., according to the Jackson Police Department, unidentified black woman’s body has been discovered on the 500 block of the street. It was a neighborhood consisting mostly of a Black population, where people found Tasia Fortune’s body and informed police.

After the body identification was made days later by Hinds County Coroner Jeremiah Howard, she was sent for an autopsy to determine the cause of death to the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office.

This case is still under investigation, and police haven’t yet found any suspicious activity regarding her death.

But the mother of Tasia Fortune, Christy Spivey, refused the idea that her daughter committed suicide.

“This has just devastated us. Tasia was strong-minded; she was full of laughs and love, she had faith in God,” Spivey told ABC News. “She had so little and gave so much. She was better than I had seen her in a long time. She was at peace. She did not do this to herself. I know my daughter, and she did not do this to herself.”

Atlanta Black Star reports at least seven cases in the USA, including Tasia Fortune’s case, where black people were found hanging under suspicious circumstances.

Kyle Bassinga, a 21-year-old man who went missing on February 14 and was found hanging from a tree in Marietta, Georgia, on February 18. Police informed that surveillance video showed Kyle Bassinga walking into the woods alone, and no signs of foul play could be found.

Suicide as the cause of his death has been confirmed by the investigation, and his family members trust the results.

Juliana Umba Nzita, a 16-year-old girl who went missing April 28 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was found May 8 hanged in a churchyard after being found by a man walking with his dog.

Investigation showed that the medical examiner decided to rule it as suicide within three days, and without any autopsy, cellphone recovery, or conversation with the finder. A relative of Juliana Umba Nzita stated that she has experienced some serious bullying.

To’Nea Nicole Miller, a 27-year-old woman, was found hanging June 18 in Miami. Justice Kai James, a 21-year-old man, was found hanging outside a Turner Job Corps cafeteria in Albany, Georgia, on June 21. Most recently, a black man was found hanging in the downtown parking lot near Nash Square during a Caribbean festival in Raleigh, North Carolina. In this case, according to Raleigh police, death has been ruled as suicide and no foul play occurred.

Raleigh police chief Rico Boyce stated that no sign of another person’s involvement in her death had been found by investigation, and he warned everybody from distributing information on the Internet.

Other cases have gained national attention. Javion Magee, a 21-year-old young man found in Vance County, North Carolina, with a rope around his neck in September 2024, had his death ruled as suicide according to the state medical examiner. Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old Delta State University student, was found hanged in September 2025 at the school in Cleveland, Mississippi.

The cause of his death was also ruled as suicide, and his relatives hired Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney, to organize an independent autopsy.

According to CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics’ data, Black Americans are one of the least likely groups for suicides, hanging, or suffocation. But the new data from the CDC shows that young Black men have a higher rate of suicides.

Brandon Jones, a psychotherapist who works with young Black men, told Capital B News that this information reflects years of suffering that the younger generation has more possibility to name.

“We’ve had these key political situations and social pushes that have affected us as a collective. Young Black people are feeling a trauma response that is leading to people wondering, ‘Do I want to keep living in a world that is treating me poorly in this situation?'” Brandon Jones said.

Many other celebrities have spoken about the issue raised in Rachel Accurso’s statement.

Broadway star Audra McDonald posted the following statement in reply to the post regarding this problem:

“WTF is happening!!!!????”

As it follows from the post she replied to: “Exactly 24 Black bodies have reportedly been found hanging from trees in the Deep South between Mar. 2025 and Aug. 2026. Some found so high up that suicide is implausible. I’ve said it before: black people do not publicly lynch themselves.”

Activist and life coach Barrett Pall made his post on Threads referring to Fortune’s death: “BLACK PEOPLE DO NOT HANG THEMSELVES FROM TREES. ANOTHER WOMAN WAS FOUND MONDAY.”

Also, Black Lives Matter groups organized protests against what they see as an improper reaction by local coroners, pointing to their quick decisions in several cases within 72 hours.

According to Rachel Accurso’s statement, Jason Arday is a British sociologist who became the youngest black professor at Cambridge University in 2023. Arday, 41, resigned due to the allegations of plagiarism and the public attention he received on August 5, and then was found unresponsive on August 14 in his home in Battersea, London. London’s Metropolitan Police treat his death as an unexpected one.

According to Jason Arday’s family, he suffered years of abuse. “The misinformation campaign was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and always wanted the best in everyone.” According to the statement, Cambridge vice-chancellor Deborah Prentice described the news as “desperately saddened.”

This post comes after other political posts made by Rachel Accurso, including her statements on Gaza children, support for a democratic candidate, and the gay community.

On August 10, Rachel Accurso posted a quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 essay, “The Case for Reparations.”

“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole,” the quotation says.

Panelists on Fox News criticized Accurso for making political statements, advising parents to control what children see on the Internet.

Accurso also asked to look deeper into the case of Nolan Wells, an 18-year-old Southwest Mississippi Community College wide receiver, who went missing during a July 4 boat trip with friends near Horn Island, and whose dead body was found on the shores of the river several days later.

“We know the investigation and everything that followed would have been different if Nolan Wells were White and his friends were Black,” Rachel Accurso wrote, stating that Nolan and his family need justice.

The local coroner decided on drowning as the cause of Nolan Wells’ death; authorities say that no foul play has been found. But Nolan Wells’ family has also contacted Ben Crump to seek an independent conclusion.

Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg criticized Rachel Accurso in her comment to Fox News Digital.

“Ms Rachel is at it again,” Aronberg said. “Whether it’s injecting division into domestic tragedies or spreading toxic, antisemitic rhetoric in her posts about the Middle East, she constantly pushes narrative over facts. We need real investigative transparency, not popular children’s creators using tragic deaths and foreign policy to divide us.”

Representative for Accurso did not respond to my request for comments.