Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips
Blood at the Root: A
Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips
In
September of 1912 two white women were attacked in Forsyth County. Ellie Grice
claimed to have been raped by a black man. Mae Crow was beaten and left for
dead. The events that directly followed these two incidents were the lynchings
of five black men accused of the crimes and the exodus of the almost 1100 black
residents of the county. The white residents of the town threatened, attacked
and stalked the black members of the community until they feared for the life
and fled into neighboring counties. Those residents who sought to protect the
black workers that worked for them would be threatened until they conceded.
Forsyth County, Georgia would then be known as a “white county” something the
residents relished with pride. For the next 75 years this county would hold its
racial line, defending it with threats to any African American that dared to
cross it. In 1987 the Civil Rights movement would finally break through the
barriers and drag the county into the national spotlight where their views
would finally be challenged and eventually overcome.
Patrick
Phillips and his family were residents of Forsyth County in the 1970s and
1980s. They would march in the Brotherhood Marches led by Civil Rights leaders.
His writing and testimony lends such a terrifying credibility to this story
that’s hard to deny and honestly extremely disturbing. This isn’t a story to be
taken lightly and Phillips did an amazing job in his research and in the way he
conveys the county’s history. Every rock has been overturned in an attempt to
honestly convey the tone of those who prided themselves on living in a town
which such a disgusting history.
Why do
we read books like this? Because it’s important to understand the history of
racism, how it is conveyed, how it is inherited and how it is a result of an
irrational fear. There was absolutely no evidence that the attacks that took
place were at the hands of black men. But the fear that lived throughout the
town was so prevalent and all-consuming that one man was lynched the day Mae
Crow was found, without a trial or any evidence pointing to his involvement in
the crime. It’s beyond disgusting but so very evident of the problem with
racism in this country. This book is a glaring spotlight on the racism still
prevalent in the U.S., and how it’s managed to rear its ugly head time and time
again. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. I am shaken and angry after finishing
but grateful that this story has been told.
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