2026 : The Ghost Of Mississippi Returns

Transcript

The Rule Black Families Live By

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you leave with five, you come back with five. That has always been an unwritten law passed down through generations of black households. It is not just a rule of accountability, it is a rule of survival. But over the past Fourth of July weekend, eighteen-year-old student and athlete Nolan Wells went out to Horn Island, Mississippi on a boat with a group of friends. The boat came back to the mainland, but Nolan didn't come back. Two days later, a park ranger discovered his lifeless body from the water. Welcome back. Welcome back to the show. Thank you for tapping back in. Today we are breaking down a case that has completely taken over the social news cycle. We aren't covering this story just because a young, promising life was cut short right before his Division I football tryouts. We are covering it because the official narrative that we are being asked to accept feels tragically and historically familiar. As I said, family, welcome back. Welcome back to the program. Freedman's Affairs Radio. I'm your host. Aaron Black, Fast Black. And this story is uh it's a big one. And I think it's going to, I think this is going to be bigger, bigger than, potentially bigger than the Camelo Anthony uh case. Because this is this thing is turning out to be uh very, very mysterious and like I said uh just a moment ago, very familiar, has a chillingly familiar uh feel to it. So but before we get into before we get into all of the things about the story, let's find something that that we know to be to be accurate, and and that is uh the official news story, and then we hear for a little bit from from an attorney that is actually involved in the case. So let's let's uh stay tuned for that. Follow me now, follow me.

What Authorities Say Happened

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Wells have gone out to Horn Island with a group but didn't return with him, and he was found dead just off of the island Monday morning. We learned that a call was made to the Coast Guard around 11 p.m. on July 4th by a friend of Nolan's. And we are working to learn more on the details of the call made Saturday night. However, we know the Jackson County Sheriff's Office did not request Coast Guard assistance until around 12 p.m. the next day.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

You haven't. That is the official report now. If I will, if you'll allow me, I will go to listen to what um attorney Benjamin Crump, who is involved in this case, and uh let's hear what he

Crump’s Warning And Public Alarm

SPEAKER_01 3:44

has to say. Hold on.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Because it's it's not adding up. It's just not adding up. I mean, you had this 18-year-old kid who went out celebrating on the 4th of July uh with his friends on a boat, and tragically, they all came back, but Nolan didn't. And Nolan was the only African American in the group. And so it is like making people harken back to the sins of the past in the state of Mississippi, and so I think that's why people are so concerned with getting to the truth of what happened to Nolan Wales.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

It is so pay attention to what he said, pay attention to what he said, and it's very chilling. As I said, if it is it's a eerie, eerie, eerie familiar feeling to the sins of the pe of the past in that state of Mississippi. Very chilling. Because as of yesterday, some more information is unfolded. And uh we we gonna try to stay with the story because like I said, this thing is is potentially big gonna be bigger than the Camelo Anthony case. I I believe so. If my uh uh intuition is uh in alignment,

The Phone Evidence And Timeline Gaps

SPEAKER_01 5:19

it would be big. Now let's talk about what we know right now because the family's legal team, led by attorney Benjamin Crump, just laid out the glaring inconsistencies at a press conference right here in New York City. You know, local law enforcement in Jackson County, where this took place at immediately put out a theory claiming that from the people they interviewed, it sounds like Nolan chose to stay behind on the island to get a ride back with someone else. Why is that? Now, reports have been coming out that there was some kind of fight at an at someone's house. Because if they all came together, as I said, him and three other buddies, the Fordham, came on the boat together. Why wouldn't they leave together? Why would he want to ride with someone else? Then there was a story about there was a girl that he was supposed to make some contact with and he wanted to stay behind with the girl, and you know, so on and so forth. But the facts on the ground are screaming a completely different story. First, let's talk about the logistics. Nolan was a brilliant athlete and an incredibly strong swimmer. His family made that clear in the press conference. He was strictly forced, focused on his upcoming football season, and was avoiding anything that would compromise his performance. So why would he randomly uh strand himself on a barrier island ten miles off the coast? Secondly, look at the technologic tech uh the the uh technology. Nolan's mother couldn't reach him. She checked it, she checked his location uh via the the Life 360 app. There's a lot of people using that app, parents and stuff like that, that use that app to you know keep a track of their children. This app tracked his phone to the mainland sitting at a friend's house while Nolan was supposedly left behind on the island. Why was his phone off the island if he chose to stay? Good question. That is a very good question. Ben Crump openly asked the question No young person leaves their cell phone, and that is true. Think about it. Think about that family. These kids cannot live without the cell phone. I would say, secondly, to all to a vital organ in their body inside their bodies. That's how important the phone is. Right? Worse than that, these investigators are now doing a s uh forensic extraction because text messages were uh actively deleted from Nolan's phone before it was recovered. Add that to a viral video video circling from the beach that day where you can uh allegedly hear a voice matching Nolan's screaming, demanding his phone back during an argument. The official story is it's a drowning with no foul play, but the evidence is a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't fit. There's so much inconsistencies from these uh three young men that were with him, his his buddies. A lot of inconsistencies. Then why was again, why would his phone, they have his phone and bring his phone back? Right? Just think about this. Now, there it's been coming out there that there was a party at some house, one of these young men's houses, and the mother was the chaperone at the house, and she has completely got on code. See, there's lessons in all of these things, family, for us. There's lessons in this. You see how these other communities stay on code good, bad, right, wrong, or indifferent, they will stay on code. The same thing happened in the Camelo Anthony case with those 21 witnesses. Now, it's hard to get uh more than four or five people to say the same thing or repeat the same thing in cohesion. However, when you when the code is silent, when the code is not silent, solid, that's not hard to do at all. And these people know how to stay on code because the mother that chaperoned that house, that pool party at that at that location where his phone was pinged at, she stayed on code. And if my guess and my hunches are right, she's gonna have to answer for that. Because she

Rumors, Deleted Texts, Viral Audio

SPEAKER_01 10:32

knew prior knowledge of things that happened, and she didn't report it. I'm sipping a little tea here, and if you hear me cough from moment to moment, um I'm battling battling a little summer bug. I have some chest congestion and you know, trying to get it up, so I'm drinking this, this, these hot tonics and stuff like that. To try to help out with that. Back to it though, back to it, family. Uh I wanna I wanna get to something that I heard Bishop George Macon talk about, and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about the the ghost of Mississippi past. Because all of this stuff has, like I said, a very familiar, uh, eerie feel to it. We're talking about, we're going back 1955. Y'all know what I'm talking about. But let me try to find that that uh that that that uh piece of information from Bishop George Macon over at Street Media. That's my man, that's my brother over there. Love that brother. I love his content. And um we're gonna we're gonna get to it. We're gonna get to it, family. Just give me a second, let me pull it up.

SPEAKER_04 11:50

Leave the island. And he went back to Wyatt's house for a pool party. And during that pool party, there was an altercation between Wyatt, Nolan, Evan, and somebody else. And apparently they beat Nolan to death with some sort of bar or pole. There are people that are putting out witness statements stating that they were there and they saw Nolan spitting up blood and that these boys y it on Nolan. They are saying that Evan's mother knew about the whole thing. Allegedly, they took Nolan's body back to the water. They're saying that this is the reason why it pinged on land at that house before they found that phone. This is why that boy told his daddy that Nolan was like a brother to me. Was like a brother to me when he showed up to get his car. Because they already knew he was gone. Is this the reason why they needed dental records? Because he was unrecognizable? This case is starting to bust wide open. And we all knew that something else happened to Nolan.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Now, there's a lot of rumors going around. There's a lot of rumors out there right now in regards to this No Man Wells situation. Now we have a picture resurfaced where uh they have a picture of him inside the a pool, right? After he was supposed to be, you know, came up missing at one o'clock in the morning, right? And, you know, he's out there with friends. We're hearing that he was bludging to, you know, he was bludging with uh an object and was unalized. I'm hearing a whole bunch of stuff. Now, in the days of uh of social media, AI, and all that kind of stuff, I don't know if I believe everything until I see that, you know, they come with facts. Now we know that uh, you know, his attorney Ben Crump uh posted something. The family, you know, was posting stuff online. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of people saying, there's a lot of people saying a lot of things, man. So attorney Ben Crump, you know, he came out and he post he posted uh the streets are talking. Now listen, I don't know if these are facts or rumors, but no official statement has been confirmed. We sometimes have to follow all clues until the truth is found. Here is what we discovered on social media last night. Social media allegations claim a photo exists of Nolan uh uh at a land-based party in Jackson before 10 a.m. on July 5th. And and not um, and not uh one of those 25 people said he was actually here at uh this party, meaning, meaning his body was driven back.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Um Yeah, we'll get back to George Macon, but I just wanted to get that that piece of information there because before any autopsy or anything was done, the police there in that county put out immediately no foul play. This is an accidental drowning. How do you do that without an autopsy? Now, let's let's I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna stay on par here. I'm gonna stay on par and I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you to walk with me on this family. I'm gonna ask you to walk with me because these massive inconsistencies, Nolan f Nolan's family

Independent Autopsy And Outside Support

SPEAKER_01 15:10

did something drastic. They bypassed local Mississippi uh authorities entirely. Check this out, family. With financial backing from Colin Kaepernick, know your rights. He has that organization and uh they they're covering the expense for a a Washington DC forensic autopsy. The body is has been flown to Washington DC for a forensic independent forensic autopsy. Right? Also Tyler Perry is covering the funeral. They flew Nolan's body out of out of out of the state to Washington for a completely independent autopsy. To an outside observ observer, refusing to trust local law enforcement might look like internet cynicism. But we're talking about Mississippi family. In this state, flying a body out of jurisdiction isn't a a modern uh social media trend. It's a historical necessity. There are many cases that that that they the government had to step in because of the the shenanigans of that state or the local authorities of that state.

Mississippi History And The Emmett Till Echo

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Let's look at the history starting in uh that started in 1955, and this this case actually kicked off the civil rights movement with 14-year-old Emmett Till. When his brutalized body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, local Mississippi authorities tried to force an immediate low-profile burial in a concrete grave to hide the physical trauma and close the case. It took his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, to fight tooth and nail to get his body shipped back to North Chicago so an independent eye could see what they had done to her son. The whole world seen that. I think they put that in in in on the top story in the cover of Jack Magazine. I'll never forget I I wasn't born at that time. But from the historical record and and the physical uh images I seen of that, I'll never forget that. What they done to him and how that body looked, his remains. Beautiful young boy, handsome little young fella, and what they did. Now, this is teetering on the cusp of that because his uh Nolan Wells' uh body was unidentified. They needed dental records to identify him. That's how they identified. They couldn't tell who he was. This is why I tell you this story is so chillingly and eerily familiar, right? Throughout the civil rights movement, the inside the incidental narrative was actively weaponized by local jurisdictions. When activists went missing or were found dead in rural counties, local coroners and sheriffs routinely wrote them off as accidental drownings, sudden suicides, or freak mishaps. Why? Why was this? Because an accident meant that the book was closed. An accident meant local residents were protected, and federal investigators had no grounds to step in. Ah, but alas, the parents, along with Ben Crump. Now, I'm not a fan of Ben Crump at all. He repres he to in my opinion, he represents something that is in the way of the grassroots. He is an obstacle, he is part of the problem that we have in other areas. But you know what? We're gonna put that aside for now. He's still our brother, he's still our brother, he's a freedman. So we're gonna put that aside for now to get this work done. When Brink uh when when Ben Crump notes that Native black Americans have zero confidence in localized Southern investigations, he is speaking to an unbroken line of systemic negligence. In Mississippi, that state, independent forensics are often the only barrier between the truth and the cover up. This thing has been a part of a nationwide pattern, especially in the South. Let's be clear about this, family.

A Pattern Beyond One State

SPEAKER_01 20:10

This isn't isolated to one state. The anxiety, anxiety flooding our timelines right now is a collective response to a recurring nationwide pattern. We have been, we have seen this exact blueprint play out repeatedly when a black individual is the only one navigating a majority white social circle in an isolated environment. We saw it in 2018 with uh Tamla Horsford in Fort Side County, Georgia. A 40-year-old black mother goes to an overnight slumber party with a group of white women, and the next morning she's found dead in the backyard. The initial official narrative, an accidental fall from the balcony due to intoxication. It took years of relentless public mobilization and family pushback to expose the conflicting timelines of the witnesses who were there. We saw it right back again in Mississippi in 2022 with Rasheem Carter, a 25-year-old man, tells his family and local police that he is actively being hunted and stalked by a group of white men. He goes missing, his remains are found scattered in the woods, and the initial official response downplays foul play. It wasn't until independent forensic experts were brought in that the horror, horrific reality of the physical trauma to his remains was brought to light. So when our community watches Nolan's story unfold, we aren't jumping to conclusions. We are remembering, yes, we are remembering the stuff. Comes back. Now, like I said, I wasn't born, I wasn't nowhere around in 1955 when Emmett this happened with Emmett Till. But every time you hear a story like this, you can put yourself there almost and you can feel the reality of the what happened. We don't break these stories just down to just sit in grief, and we don't do it to breed fear or tell our young people to isolate themselves from the world. We do it to build operational awareness. When you or your children are navigating spaces where you are outnumbered, you cannot rely on standard social etiquette. You have to have a safety protocol moving forward. This is what I would like us to do, family. Moving forward, it's a call to action here. Here are three non-negotiable steps we need to practice and pass down to our youth. First, establish a digital anchor outside the room. Never let people you are physically with be the only ones who knows where you are. Listen to this. Listen to this well, family. If you're going on a boat, a trail, or some rural property out in a suburb somewhere, your live location data, whether it's Life 360, the app, or Find My, that's another app, must be actively shared with a parent, a sibling, or a trusted black pair who is safe

Three Safety Protocols For Young People

SPEAKER_01 23:36

safely back on the mainland. If that dot stops moving, someone outside the environment needs to know instantly. The second uh course of action that needs to be uh explained to all our youth and to all of us is implement uh the emergency check-in uh safe word. Create a protocol with your circle. If you text a specific, completely random word to your contact, a word that looks totally normal in a sentence, it triggers an immediate response. Your contact calls you instantly with a staged family emergency, giving you a clean, unquestionable excuse to exit that environment immediately without causing social awareness. I've done that. How many of you have done that? Especially women do that. They'll tell their girlfriends, look, girl, I'm with this guy, but I, you know, I don't, I'm not feeling comfortable with him. Call me with an emergency. You know, you you y'all have your codes. We all need to have those kinds of codes. I've done it. Been been out with a chick and wasn't feeling it, was trying to get away from it. The chick then got drunk and started acting stupid. And, you know, I had my niece call me one time. Well, one of my nieces called me. And then this was before, this was uh, this yeah, this was around, was this cell phone time? Or or was it, I think it was still, we were, I don't know if we were using cell phones at the time. I think we were using pages. And she kept blowing up my page, and I had to tell her, let me use your phone for a minute. I gotta, and I it was, I gotta go. It's emergency. Same thing there, same thing. And third, reinstitute Nolan's rule. If you leave with five, you return with five. Teach your children that if a friend group attempts to separate them from their phone, their keys, or their vehicle, that is not a casual disagreement. That is an immediate operational red flag. You don't you do not leave a peer behind and you do not let yourself be left behind. True dust justice for Nolan Wells won't come from internet speculation, but it won't come from sweeping inconsistencies under the rug either. Keep your eyes locked on Washington, D.C. for the independent autopsy results. And that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna watch for them and wait for those results. Family, we all had that. And they used to tell us when we get ready to go out when we were younger, and we getting ready to go to the roller skating ring or wherever, to the party or whatever like that, the the older folks will tell you, all right, y'all leave together now. Y'all y'all stick together and come home together. Yeah, even if you meet somebody and and you slide off with them for a few, you not leaving the group. We not coming back without to the hood without you. And we used to, and you know, when I was growing up, family, when I was growing up, uh the territory everything was territorial. So my block, my block, we had, we had, we had two, maybe three sides of three of our block from from from the top hill, the on top of the hill down to the boulevard, there were three, there were three sides. And each one of those blocks had 5200 children. Right? Kids and teenagers.

unknown 27:05

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

And whenever there was a jam somewhere in the in the name in the vicinity, we would all go together. It might be a hundred, hundred and fifty of us, sometimes two hundred of us, going to to the park, to the wherever the local jam was going on at that day. And we knew we had hostile territories that we used to have to pass, pass through to get to where we our destination. And the older guys would tell us at the end what time to meet up at the end, you know, some because you're gonna get separated and move around when you get to the get to the place or whatever. Most of us would stick together and stay in the group, but they would tell you if you this this will time we meeting back here when the when the joint is over, we meeting back right back at this spot right here. Everybody better be there. Cause we all got to travel back through those territories that were hostile to us. Uh-huh. So we all had to be together, and if we had those dominant numbers like that, we would get home safe.

unknown 28:07

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

But if you split splintering off and three over here and three over there, you going back through those territories, you might not make it safe. So that was always a golden rule with us. Family, let's let's see where this goes. And like I said, we're going to keep keep our eyes on Washington, DC for that autopsy report. Hopefully it'll be out sometime today. And and we can really find out, get to the bottom of things. And I think this case is going to be big because they done they done caught these boys lying. They done caught one of the parents lying. And maybe it wasn't anything wrong, but it doesn't. It looks like there's there's a there's a there's some stale rotting fish somewhere that

Sticking Together Then And Now

SPEAKER_01 28:55

fell behind the counter and it's behind the register and nobody saw it or now smelling. So we'll see, but good family, good folks. We gotta get out of here. It's it's time for us to wrap it up. And we're gonna we're gonna get out of here. But I I I'm gonna, you know, back in 1977, July the 13th, the lights went out in New York City. The lights went out. Do y'all remember the deal? Some of you, some of some of you may not be old enough to remember that. But I I remember that. And you know, this is the anniversary of that day. This is the anniversary. But family, it's been good. It's been good. And y'all come back, y'all come back, and we're gonna talk again next week. We're gonna talk again next week. And I want all of you to be safe, be safe, be on point, and remember those three points that I that I laid out, those calls to action for us. And we're gonna need a lot of these things going forward. So, peace to y'all. Y'all take care. Go in peace and keep the peace. Respect life, love justice, cherish freedom, and treasure the peace. Love y'all.