0:03 [SPEAKER_00]: September 1912, 4 Sith County, Georgia, 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, farming country, red clay roads, pine forests, thick enough to block out the afternoon sun. 0:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The air sits heavy. 0:23 [SPEAKER_00]: It smells like turned earth and wood smoke. 0:28 [SPEAKER_00]: More than 1,000 black Americans live here, 0:31 [SPEAKER_00]: They owned land. 0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: They go to church. 0:35 [SPEAKER_00]: William and Ida Bagley owned 60 acres. 0:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Grant Smith preaches on Sunday. 0:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Children walk to school along their paths once moved by generations of feet. 0:49 [SPEAKER_00]: In three months, almost every one of them will be gone. 0:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Driven out by armed men who rode at nightfall. 0:58 [SPEAKER_00]: who burned churches and shot through windows and gave families 24 hours to disappear. 1:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And then 40 years after that, Georgia will flood the land where they lived. 1:14 [SPEAKER_00]: They'll close the slow skates at Bedford Dam and the water will swallow Oscarville. 1:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The fields, the foundations, the memory of it, 1:27 [SPEAKER_00]: they'll call it Lake Linear. 1:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Families will swim there. 1:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Both will cut across the surface and the story will still be underneath. 1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: What does it take to make more than a thousand people disappear? 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Twice. 1:48 [SPEAKER_00]: welcome back friend to hometown history. 1:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll on the main streets and back alleys of the past. 1:56 [SPEAKER_00]: To uncover how local stories shaped the world. 2:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters. 2:02 [SPEAKER_00]: It today works glory a county that drove out every black resident in 1912. 2:17 [SPEAKER_00]: The 1910 census, for Sith County, Georgia, 11,000 people, about a thousand of them are black, a thousand out of 11,000. 2:30 [SPEAKER_00]: That number alone doesn't tell you much, but look closer. 2:37 [SPEAKER_00]: 200 and 10 black households of those 40 owned their land. 2:44 [SPEAKER_00]: In the Jim Crow South, that's not a statistic, it's quite a declaration. 2:51 [SPEAKER_00]: These are not people passing through, Logan and Ida Bagley owned 60 acres in the shadow of Sonny Mountain. 3:00 [SPEAKER_00]: William teaches at the Stony Point Baptist Church School. 3:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The Baguys are one of dozens of Black land-owning families, farmers, carpenters, Blacksmiths, teachers, preachers, they've put down roots, they've built something. 3:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Forceeth County sits in the foothills of the blue-wage mountains, county seat, coming. 3:26 [SPEAKER_00]: East of coming, there's a small community, all Oscarville. 3:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Not a black town, but a mixed rural settlement, where black and white families live in proximity. 3:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Sheriff William Reed keeps the peace, along with his deputy, Gay Loomus, 3:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Then comes September 15, 1912. 3:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Ellen Christ, a 22-year-old white woman, claims a black man entered her bedroom. 4:01 [SPEAKER_00]: She screams, he fleets. 4:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Sheriff read Arrest Tony Howell, age 22, 4:12 [SPEAKER_00]: No physical evidence, no identification. 4:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Two days later, 500 white men gather at the coming jailhouse. 4:23 [SPEAKER_00]: A black preacher named Grant Smith is beaten by the crowd. 4:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Sheriff Reed and Deputy Lumos drag Smith into the courthouse of vault to save his life. 4:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The mayor calls for the Georgia National Guard. 4:41 [SPEAKER_00]: September 8th, May Chrome, an 18 year old white woman from Oscarville, goes missing after visiting her aunt. 4:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The next day, a search party finds her beaten and unconscious in the woods. 4:57 [SPEAKER_00]: A pocket mirror lies near the scene. 5:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Ernest Knox, a 16 year old black teenager, 5:11 [SPEAKER_00]: sources describe what comes next as a mock luncheon, a news around the boys neck until he confesses, Sheriff Reed transfers knocks to the Fulton County jail, 40 miles south, the county is already on fire. 5:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He knows what happens next if the boy stays, 5:38 [SPEAKER_00]: September 10th. 5:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Rob Edwards, 24 years old. 5:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Common law husband of Ernest Knox's cousin, Jane Daniel, is arrested as an accomplice to the May Crow attack. 5:53 [SPEAKER_00]: That same day, a mob of 2,000 white men storms the coming jail. 6:00 [SPEAKER_00]: They drag Rob Edwards from his cell. 6:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They beat him with crowbars, 6:06 [SPEAKER_00]: They put a nuse around his neck and hang him from a telephone pole on the coming town square. 6:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Then they fire bullets into his body. 6:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Deputy Lumos reportedly tries to stop the abduction. 6:23 [SPEAKER_00]: He fails. 6:25 [SPEAKER_00]: September 23rd. 6:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Make Crow dies from her injuries. 6:32 [SPEAKER_00]: She never regained consciousness. 6:35 [SPEAKER_00]: She never identified her attacker. 6:38 [SPEAKER_00]: More arrests follow. 6:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Share a freed, brings in Jane Daniel, aged 21. 6:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Her brother, Oscar Daniel, 17. 6:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Ed Collins, 27. 6:53 [SPEAKER_00]: All are moved to the Fault and County Jail for their own safety. 7:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Prosecutors claim Ernest Knox in Oscar Daniel, attacked Crowe. 7:06 [SPEAKER_00]: While Jane Daniel held a lantern and Collins provided it. 7:11 [SPEAKER_00]: October 2, 1912. 7:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The accused are escorted by Georgia National Guard, from Bedford to coming by train, then marched to the courthouse. 7:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Judge Newton Morris resides. 7:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The court appointed defense attorneys, don't object to the charges. 7:33 [SPEAKER_00]: They object to defending the accused at all. 7:41 [SPEAKER_00]: all white juries. 7:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Ernest Knox, 16 years old, Oscar Daniel 17, both convicted, both sentenced to hang. 7:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Jane Daniel and Ed Collins testified for the prosecution. 8:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Under what circumstances, the record does not say. 8:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And here's where it gets interesting. 8:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Not the verdict, 8:12 [SPEAKER_00]: The court orders a 15-foot barrier built around the gallows. 8:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Some gesture towards shielding the execution from public view. 8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The night before the hanging, white residents burned that fence to the ground. 8:29 [SPEAKER_00]: They leave the gallows standing. 8:32 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't want privacy. 8:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They want a spectacle. 8:38 [SPEAKER_00]: execution day. 8:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Approximately 5,000 spectators. 8:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Half the county's white population. 8:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Gather to watch two teenagers die. 8:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The atmosphere is described as a county fair. 8:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Spectators collect pieces of the hanging rope as souvenirs. 9:00 [SPEAKER_00]: One piece enters the county court records and later vanishes 9:06 [SPEAKER_00]: a photograph survives from that day. 9:08 [SPEAKER_00]: A handful of black men standing near a wagon. 9:14 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the last photographs of black faces in Forsyth County for 75 years. 9:21 [SPEAKER_00]: then the night riders come. 9:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Starting the night of Maycrosis funeral, armed white men gather at crossroads across the county. 9:32 [SPEAKER_00]: They carry carousene, dynamite, and guns. 9:37 [SPEAKER_00]: They burn black churches. 9:39 [SPEAKER_00]: They shoot into homes. 9:42 [SPEAKER_00]: They kill livestock. 9:44 [SPEAKER_00]: They deliver ultimatums. 9:52 [SPEAKER_00]: families flee with whatever they can carry. 9:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Some load wagons in the dark. 9:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Willie May Bagley, the Bagley's daughter, is two years old, bundled up for a journey she will not remember. 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And what about the case that started at all? 10:12 [SPEAKER_00]: The Ellen Gris allegation, in February 1913, a grand jury drops all charges against Tony 10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: no evidence, no trial. 10:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The accusation that lit the match, quietly dismissed. 10:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The scope was total. 10:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Within months, 98% of Forsyth County's black population was gone. 10:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The 1920 census recorded 30 black residents, where there had been more than 1,000. 10:53 [SPEAKER_00]: families who fled could not return to pay property taxes. 10:58 [SPEAKER_00]: White neighbors walked into the county courthouse and started paying those taxes on black owned land. 11:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Under Georgia's adverse possession law, after seven years, they could claim legal title. 11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Alex Hunter had bought a farm for $1,500, just three months before the expulsion. 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: forced to sell in December 1912, for $550, quite a loss, nearly two-thirds of what he paid just three months earlier. 11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The Bagley land, William and Ida's 60 acres. 11:38 [SPEAKER_00]: No record of sale exists. 11:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The land simply transfers to white ownership. 11:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Tax records show the Bagley's listed as owners in 1912. 11:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, they are not. 11:54 [SPEAKER_00]: By Christmas of 1912, the churches were ash, the homes were empty, the county was white. 12:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Forced County had become a sundown county, no black person stayed after dark. 12:13 [SPEAKER_00]: That was the rule, enforced not by law, but by the memory of what happened to those who 12:23 [SPEAKER_00]: No one was prosecuted for the nightwriter attacks, no investigation into the stolen property, no official acknowledgment that anything had happened at all. 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: In the records, the forces' county news published during September and October 1912 has vanished from microfilm archives, 12:48 [SPEAKER_00]: The Georgia newspaper project's boxes, for those months, contain empty space. 12:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone removed the evidence. 12:59 [SPEAKER_00]: What the records show is this, across the Chatti Huchi River, Hall County faced the same nightwriter terrorism. 13:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Their sheriff arrested 11 nightwriters in the first week. 13:14 [SPEAKER_00]: newspapers printed their names. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Six men were tried, convicted, and jailed. 13:23 [SPEAKER_00]: That sheriff said he would crush the violence in its infancy. 13:28 [SPEAKER_00]: For Sith County's sheriff did not. 13:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The violence and for Sith County could have been stopped. 13:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Historians believe the authorities chose not to stop it. 13:42 [SPEAKER_00]: At the old Stony Point Baptist Church, you can still find headstones, eight of them, wedged between rows of expensive homes, in two subdivisions, read the dates. 13:56 [SPEAKER_00]: They all stopped before 1912. 13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody was coming back to visit. 14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody was coming back at all. 14:06 [SPEAKER_00]: For 75 years, the silence held. 14:11 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1987, Forsyth County's population reached 40,000. 14:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The number of black residents, zero. 14:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Patrick Phillips, born in the 1970s, grew up in Forsyth County. 14:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He was seven years old, writing a school bus. 14:36 [SPEAKER_00]: kids on the bus told him a long, long time ago, a white girl was attacked, and afterwards, white drove all the black people out. 14:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Quite the way to learn your county's history. 14:49 [SPEAKER_00]: His parents, progressive, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, never discussed it. 14:58 [SPEAKER_00]: his father had graduated high school in 1955 and met Martin Luther King during seminary at Henry University. 15:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Even they did not talk about what happened in the county where they lived. 15:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's what nobody talks about. 15:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The second burial. 15:20 [SPEAKER_00]: 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers begins construction of Bedford Dam on the Chateh Huchi River, the project will create Lake Lanier, a 38,000 acre reservoir, and 1956, the Slu Skates, close, 15:41 [SPEAKER_00]: water swallows more than 50,000 acres of farmland. 15:45 [SPEAKER_00]: This places 250 families and relocates 20 cemeteries. 15:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Oscar Vell, the community near where May Crow was found, where black and white families once lived side by side, goes underwater. 16:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of that land was once black owned. 16:08 [SPEAKER_00]: The families who were driven out had not returned to claim it. 16:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The families who stole it were paid by the government for the damn project. 16:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Georgia buried the evidence underwater. 16:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And built one of the south's most popular recreation destinations on top of it. 16:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Lake Linier, warm water, expensive boats, and a story still underneath. 16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: January 17, 1987, 75 years of silence, and then a walk. 16:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Dean Carter, a white man from nearby Gainesville, and Joseo Williams, a veteran civil rights activist in Atlanta City, Councilman, who had marched alongside Martin Luther King, organizes a brotherhood march to coming. 17:08 [SPEAKER_00]: About 75 marchers, black and white, walk toward the 17:15 [SPEAKER_00]: For every marcher, there are more than five counter-protesters. 17:20 [SPEAKER_00]: From veteran flags, white supremacist signs, the crowd throws rocks, bottles, and dirt. 17:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The march is cut short. 17:33 [SPEAKER_00]: One week later, January 24, 1987, 15,000 to 20,000 people show up, Governor Joe Frank Harris Activate nearly 2,500 law enforcement officers in Georgia National Guard. 17:53 [SPEAKER_00]: The speakers include Hoseo Williams, Karatiscott King, Edelana Mayer, Andrew Young, comedian Dick Gregory, and Reverend Jesse Jackson. 18:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Congressman John Lewis, marches, former Klan leader, David Du, attempts to block the route. 18:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He is arrested. 18:18 [SPEAKER_00]: two weeks after that, Oprah Winfrey only five months into her talk show, travels to coming. 18:27 [SPEAKER_00]: She sits with an all-white audience of about 100 county residents on the town square, several defend the county, staying all white. 18:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Some use the inward to her face. 18:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Others say the time 18:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Oprah and her crew leave town before sundown. 18:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The lawsuit followed. 18:53 [SPEAKER_00]: McKinley verse Southern White Nights, a federal jury awards nearly $1 million in damages against two clan organizations and 11 individuals. 19:06 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1994, the invisible empire of the KKK was forced to dissolve. 19:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Their office equipment is distributed to NAACP community offices. 19:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Quite the ending for an organization built on terror. 19:26 [SPEAKER_00]: but the land. 19:28 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1987, State Attorney General Michael Bowers investigates the 1912 property theft. 19:36 [SPEAKER_00]: His conclusion and sufficient evidence. 19:40 [SPEAKER_00]: 1100 people driven from their homes. 19:44 [SPEAKER_00]: 40 black families who owned land. 19:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Property records showing white names appearing where black names used to be. 19:55 [SPEAKER_00]: insufficient evidence. 19:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody was charged. 19:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody was paid. 20:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Four Sith County grew. 20:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Atlanta sprawled north. 20:08 [SPEAKER_00]: The 1990 census counted 44,083 people. 20:13 [SPEAKER_00]: 14 of them. 20:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Black. 20:17 [SPEAKER_00]: By 2020, the population reached 251,283. 20:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The county is now 4.3% black, 15.5% Asian, and 9.7% Latino. 20:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It diversified as a suburb. 20:38 [SPEAKER_00]: But black residents remain underrepresented, compared to what the county looked like in 1912 before the cleansing. 20:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Elon Osby, granddaughter of William and Ida Bagley, joined the Fulton County Reparations Task Force in 2023. 20:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Research shows her grandparents' 60 acres would be worth more than $3 million today. 21:04 [SPEAKER_00]: No compensation has ever been paid. 21:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The book that broke the silence, he had grown up inside. 21:24 [SPEAKER_00]: The title comes from strange fruit, the Billie Holiday lynching song, based on Abel Maripole's poem. 21:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Phillips had been encouraged to ride it by poet Natasha Trethaway around 2006. 21:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It took him a decade. 21:41 [SPEAKER_00]: It became the definite account of what Forseth County did to its own people. 21:47 [SPEAKER_00]: January 23rd, 2021, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the Community Remembrance Project of Forcith County, installed a historical marker at the corner of East Courthouse Square, and West Maple Street in downtown coming, near where Rob Edwards was lynched. 22:07 [SPEAKER_00]: that September, on the 109th anniversary of the lynching, the Cindance Larry Knuckles and Lee Roy Grogan, unveil the marker. 22:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Elon Osbee delivers the key note. 22:23 [SPEAKER_00]: In 2022, Darwood's need, a white pastor who moved to the county in 1989, establishes the 22:37 [SPEAKER_00]: up to $10,000 annually for four years. 22:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Recipients must prove direct descent from expelled families. 22:47 [SPEAKER_00]: By 2024, 14 recipients have received over $205,000 for more than 150 donors. 23:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Josh Bird is a descendant who moved back to Forsyth County around 2018. 23:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Defying warnings from family. 23:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He opened a barber shop and became an ambassador, encouraging other descendants to return. 23:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Aaron Hall, a University of Georgia Junior and Scholarship recipient, carries a different weight. 23:28 [SPEAKER_00]: her great-great-grandfather was a sharecropper, separated from his family, during the expulsion. 23:34 [SPEAKER_00]: She has questioned whether she deserves the award. 23:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The inheritance of loss measured in dollars that can never quite match what was taken. 23:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Today you can visit Cummingstown Square where Rob Edwards was lunched. 23:53 [SPEAKER_00]: You can stand at the corner where the historic or marker now reads his name. 24:00 [SPEAKER_00]: You can drive to Lake Lanier and swim above the land where families once lived. 24:07 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the story of Forsyth County, Georgia, a place that buried its black residence twice. 24:14 [SPEAKER_00]: once with terror and once with water. 24:19 [SPEAKER_00]: If you found this story as heavy as I did, share it with someone who believes that what we choose to remember matters as much as what we try to forget. 24:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story. 24:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Tonight is the 1100 people, for Sith County tried to erase and the land that remembers what the water couldn't drown. 24:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Good night, friend.
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