Prometheus 6   

A Suicide or a Lynching? Answers Sought in Florida
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

BELLE GLADE, Fla., July 28 — Dawn was just breaking over the sugar cane fields that surround this town when police responded to a 911 call. A young black man was dead, hanged on an umbrella tree in his grandmother's yard.

The authorities quickly ruled the death of the man, Feraris Golden, 32, a suicide; there were no signs of struggle, and the police said Mr. Golden's grandmother told them that he had threatened to kill himself the night before.

One of the six officers who went to the scene on the morning of May 28 climbed the tree and cut the body down. But the image burned in the minds of the family members who gathered around the tree on that damp morning, and of many other residents of this racially divided town, about 40 miles west of West Palm Beach.