Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (39 page)

132
  
“took up their position”
: “Knox and Daniel Hung Last Friday,”
Forsyth County News
, October 31, 1912.

132
  
“Most of these people”
:
Report of the Adjutant General
, Appendix 2, 21.

133
  
“shortly before his death”
: “Knox and Daniel Hung Last Friday,”
Forsyth County News
, October 31, 1912.

133
  
“neither negro had a word to say”
: “Fence Was Burned to See a Hanging,”
Augusta Chronicle
, October 26, 1912.

133
  
a story passed down in the Crow family
: Interview with Debbie Vermaat, January 20, 2015.

135
  
“The heavy rope”
: “Murderer Snell Dies on Gallows,”
Atlanta Constitution
, June 30, 1900.

136
  
“table of drops”
: The English system of calculating drops (“divide the weight of the patient in pounds into 2240, and the quotient will give the length of the long drop in feet”) was widely adopted in the United States. See Hugo Adam Bedau, ed.,
The Death Penalty in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).

136
  
“the noose about their necks”
: “Knox and Daniel Hung Last Friday,”
Forsyth County News
, October 31, 1912.

137
  
“cut the rope trigger with a hatchet”
: Ibid.

138
  
“The trap was sprung”
:
Report of the Adjutant General
, Appendix 2, 23.

138
  
eleven minutes
: For more on the procedures of early-twentieth-century hangings, see http://capitalpunishment.uk.org/hangings (accessed December 1, 2015).

138
  
“ringside seats”
: Ruth Mae Jordan Berry, handwritten account, November 1980.

139
  
piece of old hemp rope
: Interview with Don Shadburn, February 24, 2014.

139
  
“they would be burned”
:
Report of the Adjutant General
, Appendix 2, 20–21.

139
  
“called Dr. Selman”
: Ibid., Appendix 2, 23.

CHAPTER 12: WHEN THEY WERE SLAVES

142
  
a white merchant named George Kellogg
: Interview with Anthony Neal, April 2, 2014.

142
  
By 1870
: Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850–1880, Census Year: 1870; District 31, Forsyth, Georgia [database online]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2010.

143
  
“Qualified Voters”
: Georgia, Office of the Governor.
Returns of Qualified Voters Under the Reconstruction Act, 1867
. Georgia Archives, Morrow, GA.

143
  
ratified the Fourteenth Amendment
: Christopher C. Meyers, ed.,
The Empire State of the South: Georgia History in Documents and Essays
(Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 172.

144
  
the day of Joseph and Eliza’s wedding: Records of Marriages, Book D, 1868–1877
, 154. Forsyth County Courthouse.

144
  
the bill Lincoln signed into law
: H.R. Exec. Doc. 11, 39th Congress, 1st Session, 1865, 45 (Serial 1255); reprint Circular No. 5, May 30, 1865.

145
  
“power delegated to these resident white appointees”
: H.R. Exec. Doc. 1, 40th Cong., 2nd sess., 1867, 673–74 (Serial 1324).

145
  
Major William J. Bryan
: Order of Col. Caleb Sibley; W. J. Bryan, letter to O. O. Howard, Washington, DC.
Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872
, Cumming Office section, National Archives at Washington, DC, M1903, roll 45.

147
  
“All this in Forsyth County”
: W. J. Bryan, report to Col. Caleb Sibley, May 1968.
Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872
, Marietta Office section, National Archives at Washington, DC, M1903, roll 58.

147
  
John A. Armstrong
: Records of Binding Cases, Probate Court Records of the Forsyth County Courthouse, box 40, “Colored.”

147
  
“ideas inherited from slavery”
: Eric Foner,
A Short History of Reconstruction
(New York: Harper, 2014), 59.

148
  
“Thomas . . . binds himself”
: “Binding Agreement: H. W. Strickland and Thomas Strickland, Free Boy of Color,” March 1866, Records of Binding Cases, Probate Court Records of the Forsyth County Courthouse, box 40, “Colored.”

148
  
“now holds without consent”
:
Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872
, Cumming Office section, National Archives at Washington, DC, M1903, roll 45.

148
  
Thomas Riley
: Quoted in Jonathan Dean Sarris,
A Separate Civil War
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 148.

148
  “
I am fully satisfied”
:
Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872
, Cumming Office section, National Archives at Washington, DC, M1903, roll 45, 112.

149
  
“affairs are in a worse condition”
: Letter from W. J. Bryan to Major Mosebach, October 31, 1868. Marietta Office section, National Archives at Washington, DC, M1903, roll 58.

149
  
“Until the freedmen are protected”
: Letter from W. J. Bryan to Major Mosebach, August 27, 1868. Marietta Office section, National Archives at Washington, DC, M1903, roll 58.

150
  
ceased all operations
: For authoritative studies of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia, see Paul A. Cimbala,
Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865–1870
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), and Sara Rappaport, “The Freedmen’s Bureau as a Legal Agent for Black Men and Women in Georgia,”
Georgia Historical Quarterly
73.1 (1989), 26–53.

150
  
“terrorized [Forsyth] just after the War”
: George Harris Bell recollections, originally in the
Gainesville News
, September 26, 1906. Excerpt reprinted in “Days of Long Ago,”
Gainesville Times
, May 16, 1976.

150
  
“a number of citizens”
: Ibid.

151
  
“Atlanta Compromise” speech
: Booker T. Washington, Speech before the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, September 18, 1895. From a version of the speech recorded in 1906, Columbia Gramophone Company, G. Robert Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University, DB 191.

151
  
“the Negro . . . should make himself”
: Booker T. Washington,
Up from Slavery
(New York: Doubleday, 1901), 202.

152
  
Joseph Kellogg had inherited
: Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850–1880, Census Years: 1880; District 879, Forsyth, Georgia [database online]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2010.

152
  
an additional fifty acres
:
Georgia, Property Tax Digests, 1793–1892
, Militia District 879, Post Office: Cumming, Year: 1890 [database online]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2011.

152
  
“the Kelloggs were themselves landlords”:
1900 U. S. Census, Cumming, Forsyth, Georgia; roll 197; p. 2B; Enumeration District 0036; FHL microfilm 1240197.

152
  
in April of 1910
: 1910 U. S. Census, Cumming, Forsyth, Georgia; roll T624_188; p. 6A; Enumeration District 0039; FHL microfilm 1374201.

CHAPTER 13: DRIVEN TO THE COOK STOVES

153
  
“After going all the way”
: “Obear Censures Public Hanging,”
Atlanta Constitution
, October 16, 1912.

154
  “
An official may compromise”
: “A Disgrace to Georgia,” editorial,
Atlanta Constitution
, November 7, 1912.

154
  
“a wealthy farmer of Forsyth county”
: “Assassins Wound Forsyth Farmer,”
Atlanta Constitution
, October 30, 1912, dateline October 29, 1912.

155
  
“Deputy Sheriff Lummus”
: Ibid.

156
  
People of color
: Ann Short Chirhart, “‘Gardens of Education’: Beulah Rucker and African-American Culture in the Twentieth-Century Georgia Upcountry,”
Georgia Historical Quarterly
, Winter 1998, 834.

156
  
“Gainesville is being invaded”
: “Trouble Brewing in Hill Country,”
Atlanta Constitution
October 14, 1912.

156
  
electric streetlamps
: William L. Norton, Jr.,
Historic Gainesville and Hall County: An Illustrated History
(San Antonio, TX: Historic Publishing Network, 2001), 29–30.

157
  
State Industrial and High School
: For more on Byrd Oliver and Beulah Rucker Oliver, see Beulah Rucker Oliver,
The Rugged Pathway
(n.p.: 1953), and Ann Short Chirhart, “ ‘Gardens of Education’: Beulah Rucker and African-American Culture in the Twentieth-Century Georgia Upcountry,”
Georgia Historical Quarterly
, Winter 1998.

158
  
the two were married
: Marriage license of William Butler and Jane Daniel, February 5, 1914, Hall County, in
Georgia, Marriage Records from Select Counties, 1828–1978
(ancestry.com); 1920 U. S. Census, Gainesville Ward 2, Hall, Georgia; roll T625_261; p. 5B.

158
  
George Collins
: Kathleen Thompson, “Racial Violence in North Georgia, 1900–1930,”
Pickens County Progress
, October 13, 2011.

158
  
the two hundred acres
: Forsyth County Return for Colored Tax Payers, 1912, Cumming District, Georgia Archives, Morrow, GA. For more on Joseph Kellogg’s land transactions, see Elliot Jaspin,
Buried in the Bitter Waters
(New York: Basic Books, 2007), 135.