Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (36 page)

40
    
“Mr. Marvin Bell”
: “Rapist Brought Here,”
Gainesville New
s, September 11, 1912.

41
    
most revered statesman
: In 1998, the Georgia General Assembly passed a law creating the new Bell-Forsyth Judicial Circuit, named for Hiram Parks Bell, and in 2004 the Historical Society of Forsyth christened its new home the Hiram Parks Bell Research Center.

41
    “
Colonel Bell”
:
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
, 1774–2005, House Document 108-222.

41
    
“white over black domination”
: Hiram Parks Bell,
Men and Things
(Atlanta: Foote and Davies, 1907), 135–36.

42
    
“If the prisoner had not been spirited away”
: “Negro Is Rushed in Fast Machine to Fulton Tower,”
Atlanta Constitution
, September 10, 1912.

42
    
“On account of the intense feeling”
: “Rapist Brought Here,”
Gainesville News
, September 11, 1912.

43
    
“wild rumors of lynching”
: Ibid.

43
    
“rumor was passing freely”
: “Negro Is Rushed in Fast Machine to Fulton Tower,”
Atlanta Constitution
, September 10, 1912.

43
    
“the distance from Gainesville to Atlanta”
: Ibid.

44
    “
more race trouble is feared
”: Ibid.

CHAPTER 4: AND THE MOB CAME ON

45
    
“Those men had raped [Mae] many times”
: Ruth Mae Jordan Berry, handwritten account, November 1980.

46
    
“went immediately”
: “Mob Batters Down Jail Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912, final edition.

46
    
“The country roads”:
Ibid.

46
    
“mob spirit”
: “Cumming Jail Stormed,”
Atlanta Journal
, September 10, 1912.

46
    
a mob of more than two thousand men
: “Mob Lynches Negro,”
Watchman and Southron
, September 14, 1912.

47
    
the sheriff “left the jail”
: “Mob Batters Down Jail Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912, final edition.

47
    
a future Klansman himself
: Shadburn,
Cottonpatch Chronicles
, Appendix H, 478.

48
    
“no excitement among the people”
:
Daily Constitutionalist
, June 11, 1862, 3.

48
    
“summarily hung”
: “Outrages in Georgia,”
Chicago Tribune
, July 8, 1870, 3.

49
    
“a jet black, greasy negro”
: “Wanted to Lynch Him,”
Atlanta Constitution
, August 28, 1886, 8.

49
    
“Gober gave him the limit allowed by law”
: “Twenty Year Term,”
Macon Telegraph
, December 25, 1897.

50
    
“locked the doors of the jail”
: “Mob Batters Down Jail Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912, final edition.

50
    
“the mob came on”
: Ibid.

50
    
“farmers known to all the countryside”
: “Mob Batters Down Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912, final edition, one star.

51
    
“but these were soon drowned”
: “Mob Batters Down Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912, final edition, two stars.

51
    
“Pistols and rifles cracked”
: Ibid.

51
    
“as soon as the guns”
: “Negro Lynched by Mob at Cumming,”
Marietta Journal
, September 13, 1912.

53
    
“the mountaineers were threatening”
: “Negroes Is Rushed in Fast Machine to Fulton Tower,”
Atlanta Constitution
, September 11, 1912.

53
    
“hurrying from the town”
: “Mob Batters Down Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912, final edition, two stars.

53
    
“it was not touched”
: “Dr. Ansel Strickland Scores Daily Papers,”
North Georgian
, November 22, 1912.

53
    
“farmers known to all the countryside”
: “Mob Batters Down Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912 final edition, two stars.

54
    
“parties unknown”
: Shadburn,
Cottonpatch Chronicles
, 209.

54
    
“The provocation of the people”
: “Editorial,”
Cherokee Advance
, October 4, 1912.

54
    
“no further trouble”
: “Cumming Jail Stormed,”
Atlanta Journal
, September 11, 1912.

54
    
“remarkable self-restraint”
: “Editorial,”
Gainesville Times
, September 11, 1912.

CHAPTER 5: A STRAW IN THE WHIRLWIND

55
    
“the clouds of race war”
: “Bloodhounds on Trail of Cumming Firebug,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 11, 1912, extra edition.

55
    
“Rumors that the negroes”
: “Terror in Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 11, 1912.

56
    
when Laura Nelson confronted the white men
: “Mother and Son Lynched,”
Clinton Mirror
(Clinton, IA), May 27, 1911.

57
    
“stomped to death”
: Philip Dray,
At the Hands of Persons Unknown
(New York: Modern Library, 2003), 246.

58
    
“Another lynching at Cumming”
: “Sheriff Saves Three Negroes,”
Atlanta Constitution
, September 12, 1912.

58
    
“The people of Cumming”
: “Quiet Reigns in Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 12, 1912, home edition.

59
    
“lock the doors of the jail”
: “Mob Batters Down Jail Door at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 10, 1912, final edition, one star.

60
    
“I realized it was too late”
: “Quiet Reigns in Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 12, 1912, home edition.

61
    
“when darkness came”
: “Trouble Over at Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, September 12, 1912, extra edition.

61
    
“No disorder of any kind”
: “Sheriff Saves Three Negroes,”
Atlanta Constitution
, September 12, 1912.

63
    
“the police system of the South”
: W. E. B. Du Bois,
The Souls of Black Folk
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 178.

63
    
“lawlessness” after dark
: “Forsyth People Ask for Troops,”
Augusta Chronicle
, October 19, 1912.

63
    
“Negroes Flee from Forsyth”
:
Atlanta Constitution
, October 13, 1912; “
Enraged White People Are Driving Blacks from County
,”
New York Times
, December 26, 1912

64
    
“a score or more of homes”
: “Forsyth People Ask for Troops,”
Augusta Chronicle
, October 19, 1912.

64
    
“Take a typical church”
: Du Bois,
Souls of Black Folk
, 92.

65
    
Faint traces of other black churches
: Garland Bagley,
History of Forsyth County
, vol. 2, 845; Sheltonville Historical Society, “A Report of the Records Committee on the History of Sheltonville and the Sheltonville Community,” April 20, 1962.

65
    
“the negro’s victim”
: “Girl Murdered by Negro at Cumming,”
Augusta Chronicle
, September 9, 1912.

65
    
“beat her into unconsciousness”
: “Second Outrage Shocks Cumming,”
Macon Telegraph
, September 10, 1912.

66
    
“although every effort was made”
: “Negro Is Rushed in Fast Machine to Fulton Tower,”
Atlanta Constitution
, September 10, 1912.

66
    
“the death of two white women”
: “Martial Law in Cumming,”
Atlanta Georgian
, October 2, 1912.

66
    
“she will likely recover”
:
Gainesville News
, September 9, 1912.

66
    
“those fiends of hell, negroes”
: “Letter from Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Crow,”
North Georgian
, October 1914, quoted in Shadburn,
Cottonpatch Chronicles
, 235–36.

67
    
“all hell broke loose”
: Ruth Mae Jordan Berry, handwritten account, November 1980.

67
    
“shooting at any black”
: Interview with Susan Berry Roberts, granddaughter of Ruth Jordan, January 6, 2016.

67
    
twenty-seven acres
: Forsyth County,
Return of Colored Taxpayers, 1912
, New Bridge District, Georgia Archives, Morrow, GA.