Next 75 years. Good evening i have the president here at the center here welcoming professor and off 39 raised given Forsyth County a National Endowment for the arts and a recipient of the american scandinavian prize for the translation the poetry collection was a finalist for the National Book award. Even though were in the presence tonight discussing the book of nonfiction blood at the root a racial cleansing in america this tells a disturbing story of racial violence in the neighboring Forsyth County. Retells the story fetid is a much larger than Forsyth County to do significant work to tell people who have been erased from the historical record. Im excited to welcome a georgette native palms and after tonight the second most famous figure. [laughter] patrick phillips. [applause]. Thanks for coming everybody and for that introduction also for inviting me end ball coming me to the center. I will talk about my book called the blood at the root talks about racial cleansing of Forsyth County georgia and the place was raised in the 70s and 80s. In this important to be invited here because the last time i was here i was up to my neck in research for this book and in the archives i made a number of discovered eight discoveries and eureka of moments. Of things that dont pan out and i was here one year ago i found a couple of letters that changed my sense of the story. Also heartfelt thanks to the Archivist Library in and staff and all the donors to support this work it is a truly deserving history and books like mine and not be possible without institutions like the land history center. I hope this will turn into a conversation there are a number of people in the room that have a personal connection and it is a little different to do this in atlanta or new york. As their people that have personal involvement some regional before discussion. But some things i want to tell you about this and what racial cleansings looks like and the way that it unfolded and how i came to write the book. And i will show you pictures of people involved. So it began with my friend the teaches at emory clearly a public 20 have taken a vacation and two nonfiction but she challenged me 10 years ago to finally tell the story. So among my friends in the poetry world she is one of their rare people who when i said i was from Forsyth County that would register. As an africanamerican woman she was the head cheerleader at the university of georgia i should mention that. [laughter] the only poet laureate who was a head june leader. [laughter] a dear friend of mine her father was white her mother was a black woman and went she was born the marriage was illegal since she has written about this too would great deal. So the project really started with a latenight conversation at a professional writing conference in new york. She really surprise me by asking a startling question that i did not see coming. Why isnt that she as southern woman of color but yet i a white man from one of the most recent states and i did not even know that . Why did i never say word about lightness . Whitey think raises the subject only four black writers whitey think you are not involved . I remember this vividly it changed my life. Is started via on the search for the truth about a dose story that i had always heard growing up of Forsyth County. And i was seven my parents moved to forsyth and now it is an affluent suburb of atlanta i was back to write the book i dont recognize any of it now but i was constantly getting lost but back then it was a pretty sleepy place the lot of chicken houses and cow pastures more of the appellation foothills then suburban atlanta up. I felt strange when i got there as a seven yearold unlike there were no black people anywhere is on the school bus pulled what they heard from their parents and grandparents along time ago a white girl was raped and killed by black men her body was found in the woods a few miles from the house where i grew up. Was told why forsyth was all white and according to my classmates it always would be. So zero and january 87 there was a place in north georgia segregation was alive and well. Nil march or blast away caught 1987 that my family took part in any event that foresight have ever seen that had kept the county all white 75 years and would coincide with the Second AnnualMartin Luther king david is easy to forget now but that was controversial so a guy who had moved to the county from california than with shock that none of his friends of color would come visit him came up with the fairly modest plan to march the 2 miles bank into cummings with every speeches celebrating dr. King and the idea was to speak out against the intimidation from forsyth. But then there was an angry mob of surrounding the marchers that the activist one of the generals of the Civilrights Movement and joined by a small handful of locals. Sister was home from college and brought this to my parents attention. They will lead eventually they had to be disbanded when they frisked them they found they were armed but the county police convince them to abandon the march they all got back on the bus and headed back to atlanta. Except my parents and my sister sitting on the side of the road with their car in the distance with angry white people between them and the car. Eventually they were into a Police Cruiser then drove home but my dad said double check the locks. This is a photograph january january 17 with john lewis leading bought marchers in 1965 in selma. So this is moving that 22 years later in the exact same situation and foresight. I was 16 that year like a typical teenager i was late to meet my parents. I cannot figure out where the march was then started to look for my parents daniel would conclude at the courthouse so when theyre expecting to appear speakers finally speaking out about all of this. But i found other young men walking toward the courthouse and only when one of them held up the newest ballet realized i was not in the middle of a peace march laugh laugh but i had stumbled my way into the middle of the kkk victory celebration i thought that id remember this vaguely that is probably exaggeration for quite a lot think anybody had aid news but i was with a photographer and she sent me a batch of photographs and one eyed click on this one i could not believe it because i do remember this guy i was standing very close to where that total was taken at that moment. And dan world georgia in the 70s there was a lot of racial slurs and jokes and what we consider bad behavior but this did not seem runofthemill is seen out there to me one week later 20,000 people came to forsyth. And suddenly theres attention focused on its even Oprah Winfrey diffuse kugel forsyth issue is only six month into your show shoes sitting on the square. Once the National Media picked up the story my home town became known as one the most racist places in america last bastion of jim crow segregation so fast forward to decades and i was a long way from my childhood in georgia living in new york having a conversation starting a fight could learn the truth of ago story because it was always told the navy a ganed mythic term of a murdered girl like uh kkk but i just wondered if it was a racist fantasy that kid like to talk about but when i typed forsyth 1912 into the database up came the list of headlines of a 80 yearold woman raped and killed allegedly by three black men. Here is a photograph of her round 1912. Deadend this was me playing hooky with the graduate work with the bubonic plague galbraith i was bored and tired of reading my dissertation was sitting at the computer terminal that had all of this information and things were coming online 2005 and archives were scanning all this information so long with that was newspaper so this story i always imagined as murky started to come into view. So this is the pitcher that came up with the land the constitution. October 2nd, 1912 at the time i did know who these were. James and her brother oscar and ernest who was 16 and these two boys would eventually be paying for those murders but i did not know any of that when i first saw the picture. But it was something i could not escape as i would scan across the photograph i knew a raise more questions than it answered. So which to end if they were accused of raping and killing her then what about the others . Did black people ever really live n forsythe . The image made me realize the image was riddled with lives and bigotry that was a terrible reality. Real people that this season of violence of all 1,098 residence as i learned more began to understand how names and dates and places always made racial cleansing seemed only alleges like something we would never fully understand rather than a deliberate and sustained campaign of terror. I came upon this very early being led through the streets of the atlanta with a doctor on the train for their trial but getting a first look at the photographs gave me hope that might be possible to learn through those refugees then what really happened to them in the fall of 1912. Searching for every scrap by could find through the archives even the ledgers in the basement of the county courthouse in disneyland historys center bomb Atlanta History Center not only what happened but howl and uh devil was in the details. This is the photograph of the children. The book made out of the material tells the true story of the legend and this speaks of a murdered girl a public lynching, a trial and execution of the teenage boys and with that which succeeded in closing the forsythe borders to nonwhites for nearly a century including the county sheriff i did not tell you but i am guessing you can tell food is the villain. [laughter] well like this pitcher i thought definitely. The characters included the county sheriff who a few years later would found the local chapter of the kkk as well was unexpected heroes and a deputy to try desperately to stop the violence and held up a lynch mob at the courthouse. But at the heart of the story is the africanamerican farmers farmers, and field hands merchants and a service that were forced out. Theyve vanished civilization and now lost forever. By have come to know more about them than he ever thought possible. Here is the largest black Property Owner in the county he was a real leader in the community. The black community was a monolithic very poor or marginal sharecropper and there were plenty of people like that including oscar danielles but there was also educated property owning africanamerican citizen steeply ems with the culture of the elite white people in the county. This is the White Community and the black community and one that is a core sample maybe we could suggest coming to grips and that was working on the of book of the true reconciliation hearing with the corrosive effects of denial and the healing power of tourists. And to think i was dredging up in the comments section but such people seem to want the reward of the Peace Process without paying the price. When i started to surge by found the of miff contained omissions or outright lies in hard to made to shield from really happened but that is a terrible communal crime. Also but i eight learned the regional it was reconstituted 1958. In the wake i learned that the nine raiders was actually and with of birth of a nation. That modern clan that is from the and the merry around so to come out to watch the film with the masks. That is imagination. But the rebirth of us kkk as the rebirth of the future summit is impossible that the campaign now terrorism and i had another year rica moment with something but then all hell broke loose you were not plant. And how did they drive out to more than 7,000 of their neighbors . 12th. [laughter] hold on a second. So how did they manage representing almost 10 percent of the county population . I found one startling example from the governor of georgia at the very outset to and did this a document from the Atlanta History Center collection. With a longtime resident after sharing reports of lawlessness you wrote directly to the governor to make sure brown understood the conviction of Oscar Daniels and the situation was growing worse but but i desire to call your attention to is the citizens of georgia. Of those and this seems to say our cowards and fearful. But those that were visited and that the women were not armed. Five men but they would ask if the women had any guns. With a fount they found one they shot the doug but then they would burn that dogs and all. And the image of a young mother as the local households and it could be an implanted due to the violence. Hundreds of acres would not be plowed which is a loss to the states and counties. This state of affairs could go on even with the restores race wars. So pursuit and arrest offenders and prosecute vigorously. But to share the anxiety of the consequences the governor was steadfast this is of problem by local people but then down letter helped me to see for the first time thats expulsion unfair burden fan. The i had an explanation but now people say it has notorious but to defend the white man and of the county of a rampage. But this 24 yearold instead was dragged from the county jail beaten and hung from a telephone pole and i should say this is the same square on the fourth of july parade where i bought my first baseball glove and now you could go there you will not find any sign or marker or remembrance. Hundreds of flights buying a pistol and also something i did not know. A winching where hundreds of people participated lead to other prisoners, seven. But the alleged damage who would lead the abduction and the hanging of a man three years later. If you novio franks story that led up to the Antidefamation League and the kkk really he is the ringleader. Again and again the archives told a very different story from the legend i heard as a kid. Id been led to believe the black community was made up entirely of poor marginal illiterate field hands of tax records reveal the whole strata of the black community that was educated, prosperous and deeply enmeshed in the county. There was joseph who had been born a slave but along with his wife eliza slowly and steadily amassed a large property and forsyth. They grew to more than 200 acres so i called followed them from slavery to emancipation to owning a tiny bit of land and over the course of you know 30 years, 40 or simply investing the prophets of each new harvest and buying a little more land and making shrewd business deals. They eventually had built this 200acre farm but it happened over a very long time. This was undoubtedly home. They were deeply, deeplyrooted in the county. There was also burt oliver. There he is. A local minister and teacher who was he and his wife founded the Industrial High School in gainesville which for 40 years was one of the most africanamerican schools of north georgia. Finally there was Levi Greenlee a black minister who wants 120 acres in the county and late in his life was inducted as the first only black member group of white clergyman called the high tor Baptist Association i should add im very honored to have three of Levi Greenlees descendents with us here. Deidre Stewart Charles levi growth and [applause] their generosity and kindness to me when i was a total stranger calling to ask about their family is typical of the many descendents i interviewed and meeting the great grandchildren and great great grandchildren of forsyths community has been one of the reports of this work. I could never have told the story without their help. All these discovers in the courthouse as libraries and archives of georgia helped expose the falseness of the very can demand old lie. All the black refugees have been marginal and never all and much in the county anyway so their expulsion was no major crime. This was implied and said overly as a kid. Instead i learned large and prosperous owners like kellogg and Levi Greenlee who were written driven out not by klansmen but ordinary white men they had known and worked with all their lives. Which brings us finally to the most fraught issue of bone that is the question of land and reparation. In 1987 in the wake of the violent brotherhood marches governor Joe Frank Harris appointed a Biracial Committee to investigate the history of violence in forsyth and to look into the charge of quote unlawfully taken land. I want to read a brief package that will give you a sense of how the community worked an entirely controversial finding. The story really faded from the News Headlines so i never knew what what came up with. Made a lot of headlines when there is violence but it took a year for this committee to go through its work and i had never seen their findings until i was working on this. Only week after these cameras are great shocking scenes of mob violence in january 17, 1987 the meeting rooms of the Forsyth County courthouse were filled with racial strife that is local lawyers and businessmen the notion that jose winds of black people he represented deserved anything at all from the county. Harris eventually settled the dispute over the makeup of the forsyth Biracial Committee by appointing six members favorable acceptable by Jose Williams commission at the atlanta civil rights leaders. The coming Forsyth CountyBiracial Committee meant many times over the next month passed by the governor in the improving Race Relations the county investigating events of 1912 through the most striking thing about the official report the committee submitted to governor harris is that it contained not one set of bindings for two one position paper written by local white members and other written by the coalitions mostly black atlantabased members. In other words even after