When George Tompkins was lynched in 1922, his death certificate listed the cause of death as suicide, despite the fact that he was found hanging from a tree in Riverside Park with his hands tied behind his back. Now, a new death certificate says it was a homicide.
The Marion County Coroner’s Office issued the updated death certificate during a memorial for Tompkins on March 12 at Floral Park Cemetery.
“No person in this room met him physically,” Rev. Clyde Posley said to a group gathered at the funeral home on a bitterly cold Saturday morning, “but unfortunately we have met him nonetheless.”
Tompkins was born in November 1902 in Kentucky and had lived in Indianapolis for only two years before he was killed. His killers were never identified.
Tompkins’ body was discovered in the woods on the afternoon of March 16, 1922. He was 19 years old.
According to the Indianapolis Star, detectives at the time believed Tompkins’ death was a suicide, but the coroner thought he was killed somewhere else and likely taken to the woods and hanged from the tree.
During the memorial, Rebecca Shrum, an assistant professor of history at IUPUI, cited two patterns of anti-Black violence in the early 20th century that can help make sense of what happened.
First was the number of lynchings whites declared to be suicides: about two dozen, according to the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University. Second was the emergence in the Midwest of “underground lynchings,” which were carried out by smaller groups of whites.
“Whites in Indianapolis committed two violent atrocities against Tompkins,” Shrum said. “They took his life, and then they erased the memory of the event and replaced it with a lie.”
Attendees went to the site of Tompkins’ unmarked grave, where the Indiana Remembrance Coalition unveiled a new headstone. Many braved the cold to place flowers on his headstone.
Contact senior staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick.
