The idea of a modern-day lynching has opened old wounds in a Southern town and across the country. But the case of Lennon Lacy is too thick with mystery to close it just yet. In the coming months, America Tonight will be returning to Bladenboro for an ongoing investigation into how the popular football player died and what the response to his death says about race in America today.

BLADENBORO, N.C. – On Dec. 13, hundreds of protesters gathered to remember the life of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy and demand a federal investigation into his death. It was an echo of the protests after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, although in this case, the police haven't been accused of wrongdoing. No one knows who strung up the boy's body on a swing set in the middle of a trailer park on a late August night.

“We know it was a hanging,” said the Rev. William Barber II, the NAACP state's chapter president, at a rally before protesters marched through Bladenboro. “But the question is, was it self-inflicted? Was it a staged hanging? Or was it a hanging or lynching homicide?”

That is the mystery that Lacy's family and supporters, local law enforcement, the NAACP and now the FBI are trying to solve. Underlying his death is the question: Was Lacy killed because he was black and reportedly dating a white woman?