The American South is filled with sad and horrific stories of violence against Black people. From slavery to present day victims in these accounts don’t escape maiming or murder regardless of age, sex, religion or orientation. One such story is the not so mysterious death of Andre Jones in Mississippi.

Background on Andre Jones

At 18-years old, young Andre Jones had his future ahead of him. A keen student, he was preparing to begin his engineering studies at Alcorn State University in late August 1992. He came from a family with strong ties in Jackson’s Black community. His father Charles X. Quinn was a minister in the Nation of Islam while his mother Esther Quinn headed up the NAACP’s Jackson branch.

The Morning of August 22, 1992

Shortly after midnight, Jones and girlfriend Tanisha Love were heading home in a friend’s truck. The couple arrived at a police sobriety checkpoint where. Sometime around 1:30 AM, the Quinns receive a call from Love saying that Jones had been arrested. When 2:00 AM rolled around, Jones called his parents and told them he wasn’t told about why he was being held at the Brandon Police station.

Two hours later, he informed his parents that he had been moved to Simpson County Jail. Simpson County rests 40 miles south of Jackson proper. Close to four hours after being arrested and Andre Jones was still unsure about his charges.

“We were told that they could not tell us anything at that time,” Esther Quinn told Unsolved Mysteries in 1994. “And Simpson County just refused to even talk to us and they told us that we could not come to their jail.”

Mrs. Quinn would talk with her son several times that day and still couldn’t find out why he was being held. She said that Jones was concerned about getting out since he started school at Alcorn State the following day.

Andre’s Death

At midnight, the Quinns received a visit from the Jackson police. An officer handed Mrs. Quinn a piece of paper with just a phone number on it. That number turned out to be for Simpson County Jail. When she called the station, she was shocked to hear that Jones had committed suicide.

“I was casually informed…as if they could’ve been talking to someone that didn’t even know who he was,” Esther said in her recollection. What made the news even more shocking was that the family knew Jones had no suicidal tendencies or dealt with depression.

Does this story sound familiar?

REFERENCES
–https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/21/us/death-in-a-jailhouse-the-ruling-a-suicide-the-fear-a-lynching.html
-https://unsolved.com/gallery/andre-jones/

SIMILAR BLACK THEN MYSTERIES
–Jayson Artis: https://blackthen.com/black-mysteries-happened-jayson-artis/
–LeVena Johnson: https://blackthen.com/black-then-mysteries-the-death-of-levena-johnson/