The ‘Racial Cleansing’ That Drove 1,100 Black Residents Out Of Forsyth County, Ga.

In 1912, white mobs set fire to black church­es and black-owned busi­ness­es. Author Patrick Phillips revis­its the inci­dent in his book, Blood at the Root. Originally.

FRESH AIR.
David Bianculli, edi­tor of the web­site TV Worth Watching, sit­ting in for Terry Gross, author of a book about a night­mar­ish and racist chap­ter in American his­to­ry. Little more than a cen­tu­ry ago, in Georgia in the year 1912, the white res­i­dents of Forsyth County ter­ror­ized and drove out the entire black pop­u­la­tion, about 1,100 peo­ple. That was the white response to two inci­dents — the alleged rape of a white woman by a black man and the rape and beat­ing of a young, white woman who died of her injuries. A lynch mob attacked and hanged one black sus­pect. And two teenagers, fol­low­ing a short tri­al, were hanged in pub­lic executions.

Patrick Phillips is one of the white peo­ple who grew up in this coun­ty when it was still all-white, and peo­ple of col­or were def­i­nite­ly not wel­come. His par­ents were among the civ­il rights pro­test­ers who, in the 1980s, protest­ed against the coun­ty’s con­tin­u­ing seg­re­ga­tion. His book titled “Blood At The Root” is now out in paper­back. It’s based on his archival research, as well as his inter­views with the town’s res­i­dents and descen­dants of the black peo­ple who fled in 1912. Terry Gross spoke with Patrick Phillips in 2016.

read more here; https://​www​.npr​.org/​t​r​a​n​s​c​r​i​p​t​s​/​5​6​9​1​5​6​832