Blood at the root : a racial cleansing in America

by Patrick Phillips

Hardcover, 2016

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

New York ; London : W.W. Norton & Company, [2016]

Description

"A gripping tale of racial cleansing in Forsyth County, Georgia and ... testament to the deep roots of racial violence in America ... Patrick Phillips breaks the century-long silence of his hometown and uncovers a history of racial terrorism that continues to shape America in the twenty-first century"--

User reviews

LibraryThing member froxgirl

"It's not my fault. I never owned any slaves." Maybe not, but if you grew up white in Forsyth County, GA, your relatives probably participated in the expulsion of all black citizens in 1912. And maybe, during a 1987 protest, they held up the banners proclaiming "RACIAL PURITY IS FORSYTH'S

SECURITY", when Rev. Joseph Lowery told locals, "We did not come here to scare you to death. We came...to challenge you to live a life of decency."

Earlier still, the ancestors of those same racists took over the area in the 1830s, when military troops rounded up 16,000 Cherokee natives and drove them out of Georgia "like a herd of livestock", forcing their relocation to Oklahoma. The horrors of Reconstruction are also recounted, where those very same wealthy families that participated in the 1912 and 1987 events used being "bound out", or working for no wages for years, to keep their slave labor in the fields.

Forsyth County was 100% white until recently, and as late as 1990, black people were shot at and chased out of its small towns. The white author grew up in the county when it was rural and not yet part of Atlanta's booming sprawl. For this book, Phillips researched the cause of the expulsion and subsequent 100% whiteness of the county towns. He details the horrors of 1912, where the "rape" of a young white girl and the rape and murder of another white girl culminated in lynching, horsewhipping, arson, and railroading and convictions of three young black men, with only coerced evidence presented.

This should be used as a textbook, along with "Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County" by Kristen Green, which details enforcement of segregated schools by the closing of all public schools in a VA county until 1986.

Trigger warning: anyone of conscience will find this to be a necessary and incredibly painful read.

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LibraryThing member pomo58

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips is a disturbing but essential read for anyone trying to understand the vast range of emotions surrounding race relations in America. While this is in part a history book it is also very much a work about contemporary society, or

at least certain pockets of American society.

The historical accounts are disturbing enough but it is often too easy to dismiss past acts as things that would never happen again or happen here. The truly horrific part is the way this unlawful and inhuman sense of racial entitlement has survived to contemporary time. As a nice illustration to debunk the feeling many of these whites had (have) of considering the land theirs Phillips discusses the Cherokee removal from these lands, yet another inhuman action from these same white families and similar ones. It doesn't matter who was on the land first, the whites of the area considered it theirs, the very definition of unwarranted entitlement.

I highly recommend this book to readers with an interest in the topic of American race relations, whether that interest be historical, sociological, legal or any other. In describing events, such as a similar attempt in another county that was squashed by both citizens and law, many aspects are ripe for discussion. For instance, while whites were indeed arrested and convicted for attacks on blacks, another factor was the presence of white interest (the landowner in one case and the construction company owner in the other) which may well have helped sway sentiment away from a pure white on black attack.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.

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LibraryThing member Bookish59

Heartbreaking telling of Forsyth, Georgia's unchecked racism, egregious cruelty, murder, fires and theft leading to the forced expulsion of all blacks beginning in 1912.

18-year old 'white' Mae Crow is missing; found raped and assaulted. Inexplicably no serious investigation was undertaken. Law and

reason may have been on the books in government and in local courthouses but did little good in the daily lives of black citizens. Mae's assault and resulting death was huge in Forsyth. It was easy for whites who hated blacks to rile up mostly illiterate but some educated white townspeople that blacks were responsible; creating armed and violent mobs looking for blacks to lynch. Why find out who committed the crime when you have blacks conveniently living near Mae's family's farm? Hiram Parks Bell, white supremacist, forces Ernest Knox to 'confess' or be lynched, (a typical torture at that time), and brings him and Oscar Daniel to jail. Other black 'witnesses' are brought along as well. Thankfully, Mayor Charlie Harris prevents the evil Sheriff Bill Reid from lynching them all at once.

But after another white woman says she saw black men in her bedroom, Big Rob Edwards is found and brought to jail where Reid 'disappears' allowing white mob to break in, attack, shoot and lynch him!

Black citizens saw the anger and hatred and many left for Atlanta. White mobs threaten poor blacks to leave town. Black homes and churches are burned down so they have no place to live. Even after the Knox and Daniel joke of a trial, and their lynchings, white mobs continue and escalate threats to black farm owners, giving them little or no compensation to leave. Mayor Harris tries to get the governor to intervene but other than holding a few meetings, nothing is done to stop the threats, fires and expulsions! Wealthy white land-owners protect their black employees until the white mobs threaten them as well. The press reveals little of what is actually going on until years later. They report that Forsyth is a golly-gee great town, and any troubles reported are due to 'outsiders.'

Soon all black citizens are gone, for years and years! Any blacks who inadvertently stop in Forsyth are told to leave immediately, or in the case of Firefight Miguel Marcelli and his girl friend Shirley, get shot at and nearly killed in 1980!!

Civil Rights activists decide to hold a Brotherhood March in Forsyth in 1987. Group receives threatening calls but together with Hosea Williams they go ahead with plan but are greeted by approx. 2,500 racist whites who throw sticks and stones at them. Sheriff tells marchers he can't guarantee their safety as he doesn't have large enough staff. Second march includes many more marchers, and more protection for them. Williams sets up Coalition to End Fear and Intimidation in Forsyth County asking Forsyth to apologize and compensate black descendants for expulsion. Forsyth responds by saying that blacks are the ones causing trouble! But in 1988 the KKK is sued and takes a big hit financially which slows and cripples their racist endeavors.

Very slowly, blacks move into Forsyth. Sadly, a statue of Hiram Parks Bell, defender of white over black domination greets visitors! No sign or statue to note the historical illegal lynchings, fires, or expulsions of American citizens (except some documents in Forsyth's Courthouse)!

And were Mae Crow's attacker(s) ever discovered?

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LibraryThing member bness2

Excellent read for anyone interested in civil rights history. The story behind one all white county in Georgia that is almost unbelievable. Shows how deep racism can run.

LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

Blood at the Root by Patrick Phillips took me weeks to read. It's not an overly long book, the author writes well, and the story is a fascinating one, but Forsyth county is just a hundred miles from my home and a quick two hour drive away. It could just as easily have happened here.

Forsyth county

lies just outside of Atlanta, Georgia and Patrick Phillips moved there with his family in the 1980s, when the county still didn't allow non-white people to live, or even pass through there. In 1987, his family went to march with Civil Rights campaigners seeking to integrate the county, but when the busloads of peaceful marchers were turned back by crowds of Forsyth county residents, Phillips and his family had to have the police escort them home. Then Phillips left for university and his hometown became just a colorful topic of conversation.

Years later, he has written a book about how in 1912, after one woman is discovered in bed with a black man and another is discovered murdered in the woods, angry mobs drove all African Americans from the county. And they and their descendants kept Forsyth county free of anyone not seen as white until the 1990s. Phillips is rigorous in his research and the story he tells is shocking and difficult to read about, but is tremendously important -- it's essential reading given how recently the county was integrated and how the attitudes still exist today.

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LibraryThing member larryerick

I wish I was in a more capable state of mind to provide a review equal to the quality of this book. First is the quality of this author's writing. While this is a non-fiction limited history report, it is provided by a poet. No, a real one. I've read several excellent novels and short story

collections from poets, but this will be my first historical book from one, at least to my knowledge. In any event, the skill set reveals itself in many fine ways, including concise flowing narrative. Secondly -- and I guess this may be a poetry thing, too -- the author takes a rather stark, in your face topic and finds layers of insight, not only for the times in which these events occurred but also, very much so, to the current American political and societal conditions. There is a particular time about a century ago in American history upon which this book derives its core, but the author finds depth through supporting events that take place decades apart and right up to the time when the author's own family is involved and bears direct witness. Regardless, I will make this final point. Toward the very end of this book, the author sort of throws out a here's-where-we-are now-years-later assessment, and it is so much apart from what happened before that the reader may then ask, "So, why should we care about what no longer exists?" I challenge other readers: What made those changes occur and how do we go about recreating them, especially in light of today's American conflicts that are so clearly mirrored in the past?

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LibraryThing member Narshkite

I was sick with pain reading this book. That is not an expression, I was nauseous and achy and in tears for much of this book. I live in Atlanta, I am active in social justice organizations, and I did not know this history. Yes I knew Forsyth was a racist place (honestly they aren't crazy about

Jews either...until the last 10 years I am not sure they were happy about non-blondes), that black people had been banned from the county in the 20th century, and that it has since become one huge upscale Atlanta exurb (I think it is the 15th richest county in the country.) What I didn't know was that there was once a thriving black community in Forsyth, and that community was flushed out by evil beyond words. This story is so important. I urge everyone to read it to understand better where race relations stand in America. The things that happened in Forsyth in the 70s, 40 years ago, seem to many things that happened only hundreds of years ago. They are not. And we are only 15 or so years out from having people alive who remembered living with the daily threat of being lynched right here 20 miles from "the city too busy to hate."

Worth mentioning: the book is masterfully researched and written by someone who grew up in Forsyth. This is both an important history, and a very personal journey and it really works.

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LibraryThing member RoxieT

I enjoyed this book and learning about a "piece of history" unbeknownst to me about a county just two hours north of my hometown on the border of GA/ AL. To think such racist mindsets continue to permeate our communities even in the 21st century...

LibraryThing member write-review

A History of Rampaging Racists

Patrick Phillips hoes heavily plowed territory (broadly, black-white relations, or lack of them, in America, from slavery to present day) and manages, often in powerful style, to produce a story that reveals much about white racial hatred. He accomplishes this by

digging deep into the purposely buried history of among the most, if not the most, violent, hate-filled patches of land in the U.S.: Forsyth County, Georgia. Today it is a giant, wealthy (among the wealthiest in the country) beneficiary of Atlanta’s prosperity. However, it still bears, though out of sight by choice, the wounds of its violent racial rampage against its African American families, so that today African Americans comprise only 2.6 percent of the population (2010 U.S. census; even Alaska has a larger African American population, 4.3 percent), in a state with 31 percent of its citizens African American.

In September 1912, three young black workers are accused of raping and murdering a white girl. From that moment and for the next nearly one-hundred years, whites, often rampaging like packs of wild dogs, lynch and otherwise intimidate the black population of Forsyth County until it is nearly one-hundred percent white, and maintain the county as whites-only straight through the 1960s and 70s. Phillips draws on primary research that includes interviews with people who were children at the time to trace Forsyth’s lineage of hate.

And it literally is a lineage of hate. What Phillips demonstrates so effectively is how virulent race hate is. Those with the notion that time will resolve racial hate, that not everybody on the scene of hateful, barbaric acts condone them, will see how wishful such a thought is. In one of the more chilling passages, Phillips quotes from Royal Freeman Nash’s article that appeared in the November 1915 issue of W.E.B. Du Bois Crisis magazine. This has to do with whites taking advantage of blacks forced to sell whatever they could not carry as they fled Forsyth:

“‘Failure to vacate on the date set meant a stealthy visit in the night and either dynamite or the torch. The result was a state of terror which caused one Negro family to accept a twenty-four hour notice [delivered by] two children aged five and six respectively, who had learned the game from their elders.’”

A worthy addition to the sorrowful history of prejudice and hatred in America, made even more compelling when readers learn that the author’s parents and he himself participated in the January 1987 Brotherhood Marches to demand change.

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LibraryThing member Carlie

The author of this book moved to Forsyth County, Georgia in 1977 when he was in elementary school. His parents were seeking a slower, more rural way of life than Atlanta could offer, but they may not have realized that they were moving into one of the most racist, segregationist counties in the

country. In fact, in 1990 there were only 14 African Americans in the county, all the way on the southern edge. Curious about how this came to be, he asked his fellow classmates but only received vague answers about a rape a long, long time ago. Years later, he decided to put the pieces together and figure out what really happened in Forsyth.

In 1912, most of the African Americans in Forsyth County were ex-slaves and sharecroppers, though there were a few who had acquired land and wealth post-reconstruction. A familiar trope in which a white woman accused a black man of breaking into her home and assaulting or attempting to assault her was the beginning of the troubles. There are various stories, one of which was that her husband came home and that is what prompted the woman to sound the alarm of rape on her lover. The man the sheriffs later arrested was visiting from another county and a relative of well-respected local black family. Others also arrested lived near the house where the alleged attack occurred. The white people of the town were enraged, not just at the alleged crime, but also at the uppity black people around them in Forsyth.

When another attack occurred later that year, this time on a girl walking home along a country road, the county was in a fervor. It did not take long to accuse another group of black residents of assaulting, raping, and leaving the girl for dead in the woods. The state troops even had to be called in to protect the accused after the beating of black preacher and a lynching of another black man was conducted. Of course, two men were later convicted and hanged, regardless of whether there was any proof. The larger crime, though, was the terrorism of African American residents and visitors of the county for the next 75 years.

One by one, black families were intimidated, their homes burned down, and their land taken over. In just a few months, not one black resident was left in the county. Even those who initially had protection from white employers were driven away when the white families were also unable to keep the violence at bay. Continued, consented violence for years to come would ensure that Forsyth County would remain white. When an African American crossed the border into the county not knowing with what brutality and intimidation they would be greeted with, they soon learned their grave mistake and never returned.

In 1987, civil rights organizers began took notice of Forsyth County; even Oprah dedicated an episode of her show to the issue. Once national attention shown light on the history and degree of racism of the place, the county drew ire from the country. Marches to protest the segregation of the county were met with violence. Even the most weathered in the civil rights movement were surprised by the level of hatred of the residents. Some local leaders were embarrassed while others were in denial.

After the marches, a biracial committee was formed by the governor. The dysfunction of the place was reiterated when even this committee could not agree on a single official report and two were filed. The most contentious issue was on the topic of reparations for the land stolen through intimidation and violence.

Twenty years later, the African American population of the county was only 2.6 percent, greatly under-representative of the area. As time and the economy continued to change the texture of the county, the old guard bigotry has gradually been replaced by suburban prosperity and anonymity. Most of the residents are likely unaware of the long history of racism of Forsyth County.

I had no idea of the history of Forsyth County. Intellectually I knew that places with such deep racism and hatred exist, but to read the story in black and white drove home just how devastating the expulsion was. This is a dark, distressing, and unnerving piece of American history that shows just one example of how difficult it can be to swim against the tides of institutional racism. Local government sanctioned theft and murder allowed this county to remain hateful well into the twentieth century, and America’s aptitude for denial of wrong-doing and idealized but not realized exceptionalism means that stories like this rarely receive the attention they deserve.

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