A memorial on June 19 at the tree where Robert Fuller hanged himself nine days earlier, Palmdale, Calif.
PHOTO: KYLE GRILLOT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Palmdale, Calif.
Friends and family of 24-year-old Robert Fuller gathered near City Hall here on a recent Saturday to clear away posters, fliers and candles left around the park tree where he hanged himself on June 10. When they were done, there were no more handbills declaring his death a hate crime by “the local KKK.”
A few days earlier, Fuller’s relatives had publicly accepted police findings that he committed suicide—but only after four weeks of frenzied speculation by activists, celebrities and social media users about a lynching and cover-up. Actress Viola Davis said Fuller was “murdered.” Reality star Kim Kardashian-West promoted a petition alleging “a clear case of intimidation by White Supremacists.” The public donated $237,012 to a GoFundMe to benefit Fuller’s sister. International media flocked to the park to speak with protesters.
The May 25 police killing of George Floyd primed the public to believe stories of racist violence. Another death of a black man by hanging—Malcolm Harsch, 38, on May 31 in Victorville, 50 miles from here—created the appearance of a pattern. After Harsch’s family reviewed a security video that confirmed the suicide finding, they accepted it. But public criticism and speculation continued as to Fuller’s death. On June 19, the Sheriff’s Department found itself trying to quell social media rumors that the Ku Klux Klan planned a rally in nearby Lancaster for Juneteenth, which commemorates slavery’s end.
Not only was there no rally, but the KKK has never been active in the Antelope Valley, the high-desert area of northern Los Angeles Country. There are skinhead gangs, says Joanna Mendelson, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. They are known to commit hate crimes, “but lynching, in the traditional definition of the word, is not one of them,” Ms. Mendelson says.
It is, however, a powerful historical memory. “It’s very difficult to accept the fact that a black man hung himself,” Juan Blanco, a former local NAACP president, tells me in the park July 18 while the family holds its private prayer service. He and his wife, Atherine, who is on the local sheriff’s advisory committee, attended the rallies to support further investigation. They’re satisfied with the final report. Officials had obtained records of Fuller having hallucinations and suicidal thoughts and attempting to set himself on fire. His debit-card records showed that, a couple weeks before his death, he bought the rope with which he hanged himself.
Further fueling skepticism about the official finding was the myth that black people don’t kill themselves. This has some basis in fact: In 2017, black males committed suicide at an age-adjusted rate of 11.4 per 100,000 population, compared with 28.2 for white males, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But a lower rate isn’t the same as zero. “I’ve talked with African-American high-school principals who say, ‘My school is 99% black, so we don’t have to worry about suicide prevention,’ ” says Jonathan Singer, president of the American Association of Suicidology.
“Suffocation,” which includes hanging, is the second most common suicide method for black men, accounting for 667 black male deaths in 2017, at least 69 of them in public places. (The most common method is firearms.) Around the date Fuller died, two other black men hanged themselves in public. One used a tree June 9 in a New York City park, and one was found June 17 in a school parking lot near Houston. Neither of the men’s families challenged the suicide findings.
Mr. Singer’s association has published an “African American Suicide Fact Sheet” noting that risk factors include homelessness, family dysfunction, psychological distress and previous suicide attempts. Robert Fuller was homeless, had tried to kill himself before, and had aged out of the foster-care system.
Malcolm Harsch was also homeless. He died at the encampment where he shared a tent with his girlfriend.
Ms. Fountain is an attorney at Charlton Weeks LLP.
