“Gripping and meticulously documented.”—Don Schanche Jr., Washington Post Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century, was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and children. But then in September of 1912, three young black laborers were accused of raping and murdering a white girl. One man was dragged from a jail cell and lynched on the town square, two teenagers were hung after a one-day trial, and soon bands of white “night riders” launched a coordinated campaign of arson and terror, driving all 1,098 black citizens out of the county. The charred ruins of homes and churches disappeared into the weeds, until the people and places of black Forsyth were forgotten. National Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips tells Forsyth’s tragic story in vivid detail and traces its long history of racial violence all the way back to antebellum Georgia. Recalling his own childhood in the 1970s and ’80s, Phillips sheds light on the communal crimes of his hometown and the violent means by which locals kept Forsyth “all white” well into the 1990s. In precise, vivid prose, Blood at the Root delivers a “vital investigation of Forsyth’s history, and of the process by which racial injustice is perpetuated in America” (Congressman John Lewis).
Discusses twelve cases in which racial cleansing emptied entire counties of African Americans from 1864 to 1923.
Including new and unpublished data, this book explores the important advances in education, economy, and historic preservation in Forsyth County, as well as the tragic events related to the expulsion of the African-American population in ...
This compelling volume offers the first full portrait of the life and work of writer Lillian Smith (1897-1966), the foremost southern white liberal of the mid-twentieth century.
Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities
Highlighting his entire career, this collection includes a generous selection of recent and never-before-translated work into English.
This book of elegies takes us from the luminous world of childhood to the fluorescent glare of operating rooms and recovery wards, and into the twilight lives of those who must go on.
Dream A World Anew is the stunning gift book accompanying the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Winner of the 2005 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The award is presented annually for a first book by a poet of genuine promise.
This book is a consummate distillation of those themes that leans back to remember 'America's original sin,' principally to rivet our attention and commitment to a different future. This is a sobering and motivating act of hope.
Presents a collection of poems that describe the struggles of being both a father and a son.