Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (30 page)

The marchers needed protection, because while most people lining the road stood chanting, “Go home, niggers!” and “Keep Forsyth White,” others started hurling anything and everything they could find, pelting the line of marchers with sticks, clods of dirt, bricks, broken beer bottles, and rocks. After Williams was struck on the side of the head, Sheriff Walraven gathered march organizers and warned them that he could no longer guarantee anyone’s safety. Williams, however, was determined to continue, and that night on news channels around the world, people watched in shock as the gray-bearded sixty-one-year-old winced and ducked the flying rocks, shook his head in disbelief, and carried on.

BORN IN ATTAPULGUS
, Georgia, in 1926, Hosea Williams grew up under Jim Crow, and as a boy of thirteen he nearly suffered the same fate as Ernest Knox and Oscar Daniel when a mob of whites in Decatur County came to his house and accused him of raping a young white girl. By Williams’s own account, his grandfather held them off with a shotgun, until “a friendly white neighbor interceded to prevent further violence.”

After serving with an all-black army unit in World War II, Williams was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained during a Nazi bombing. When he came home from the war in 1945, still recovering from his wounds, he was nearly beaten to death in a bus station in Americus, Georgia—for having the audacity to wear his army uniform and for trying to take a drink from the “whites only” water fountain. As Williams put it, “I had watched my best buddies tortured, murdered, and bodies blown to pieces. French battlefields had literally been stained with my blood. . . . So at that moment . . . I realized why God, time after time, had taken me to death’s door, then spared my life . . . to be a general in the war for human rights.”

Williams went on to become a leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr., who called Hosea “my wild man, my Castro,” for his willingness to defy court orders, stare down club-wielding policemen, and march against even the most dangerous white supremacists. Williams was at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis when James Earl Ray assassinated King in 1968, and in the wake of the murder, he vowed to carry on King’s work. More than any other member of the SCLC’s leadership, he continued to fight at street level, leading marches and protests throughout the 1970s. Along the way, Williams became a prominent and controversial figure in Atlanta politics, ridiculed by many whites after he was arrested on charges of drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident.

By 1987, nearly twenty years had passed since King’s death, and Williams, far from his glory days, was a frequent punch line to racist jokes on the talk-radio stations of Georgia. But as he walked through a hail of rocks and bottles in Forsyth, he also walked back into the arena of his greatest triumphs and returned to the role where his greatest strength—old-fashioned bravery—had always been on display. The more the mob on Bethelview Road screamed and threatened, the more Williams felt in his element. Just as King
had taught him, and just as they had done in Birmingham and Savannah, St. Augustine and Selma, Williams met the violence in Forsyth with nonviolence. Walking toward the county courthouse of Georgia’s last bastion of segregation, Williams clutched a megaphone and, in his raspy, wavering voice, led the marchers in verse after verse of “We Shall Overcome.”

ALL AROUND THEM
, officers of the county police and the GBI were making arrests, and when they frisked the handcuffed men, they discovered that many had come to the White Power Rally with loaded guns tucked into their jeans and hidden under their jackets. After Walraven told Williams that he feared a shooting if the demonstration continued, the marchers reluctantly agreed to get back on the bus. As soon as the doors opened and marchers began filing on board, the mob let out a howl of celebration.

As a final act of defiance, the bus drove the last few miles to Cumming, and the marchers made a symbolic gesture of walking across the finish line at Blackburn’s school, just outside of town. But as journalist Elliot Jaspin put it, “If the gesture was intended to show that the Brotherhood March had triumphed over racism, it persuaded no one.” During the long ride back to the King Center, it was clear to everyone involved that they had been defeated by an army of Confederate flag–waving, rock-throwing whites who weren’t about to yield territory their ancestors had been defending since 1912. It was going to take more than one afternoon to end seventy-five years of segregation in Forsyth County.

JOURNALISTS COLLECTED REACTIONS
to the day’s events and spoke with people on all sides in the conflict: dismayed activists, elated white counterprotesters, and county leaders who claimed that the root of the problem was not Forsyth’s history of expulsions and racial violence but the media’s unfair portrayal of a peaceful community.

Hosea Williams was typically blunt. “I have never seen such hatred,” he told a reporter from the
New York Times
. “I have been in the civil rights movement 30 years, and I’m telling you we’ve got a South Africa in the backyard of Atlanta. . . . There were youngsters 10 and 12 years old screaming their lungs out, ‘Kill the niggers.’ ” Asked if he planned to return for a second march, Williams said, “I think I have to go back.” Reverend R. B. Cotton Raeder, another veteran of the civil rights struggle, echoed Williams’s shock. “I’ve been in many such situations,” he said, “but never one that was any worse.”

Spokesmen for the chamber of commerce, the city of Cumming, and local churches quickly went into damage-control mode. Roger Crow of the chamber admitted that the violence was “an embarrassment,” but he characterized the hundreds of locals who had attacked the marchers as “outsiders.” “The vast majority of the citizens [of Forsyth] support the rights of everyone,” he said. “They’re God-fearing, hard-working, and most of them, law-abiding.” B. V. Franklin of the First Baptist Church concurred, saying, “I don’t think what we saw was indicative of the people here,” and County Commissioner James Harrington assured reporters that “people here don’t teach their kids to hate anybody”—even as news stations ran footage of children raising their fists and chanting, “Go home, niggers!”

Roy Otwell Sr., the ninety-two-year-old patriarch of one of the county’s most prominent families, summed up the wish of most residents, which was that all those demanding an end to segregation in Forsyth—and a reckoning with the county’s past—would simply drop the subject. “If they would let us alone,” Otwell said, “it would die down and blacks would be more accepted.” Otwell had witnessed the events of 1912 with his own eyes as a seventeen-year-old, and he had lived his entire life in a place that showed no signs of changing. Yet even seven and a half decades after night riders had first terrorized the black residents of Forsyth, Otwell still clung
to the idea that the integration of the county was only a matter of time and patience. The march, he believed, had been an unnecessary provocation.

In order to claim that “most people” in Forsyth were innocent bystanders, leaders like Crow and Otwell had to ignore the statements other locals made to reporters. Asked why he had come to the White Power Rally, a thirty-four-year-old Forsyth man named William Griffan said, “I figure they could pick a better place to do it than Cumming. My granddaddy helped run the niggers out of here in 1912. They hanged some.” Rayford Grindle, who had lived in the county all his life, told a reporter that “most people here don’t want them to move in.” His wife, Janice, nodded as they stood outside the Second Baptist Church and added, “This has been our home, and having it all-white is all we know.”

Another local man, Ron Seaman, came to the march on horseback, and he made a striking figure at the White Power Rally, galloping back and forth with a rebel flag flowing behind him. Asked what he thought of the protesters, Seaman said, “They ought to have printed up . . . targets and given it to them as they got off the bus.”

EVEN AMONG FORSYTH
residents who stayed home from the rally, there was plenty of support for the Forsyth County Defense League. Kelly Strickland, who lived only a mile from the scene of the violence, wrote to Governor Joe Frank Harris a few days after the march. “I am tired Governor Harris,” she said.

I just want this to all be over [and] I want everyone to leave us alone. . . . I would, without doubt invite a black person into my home for dinner. I love them and respect them, I just do not prefer to live with them. I am sorry. This is my right.

A Forsyth man named Bill Bolton wrote to the governor to decry not the violence that had greeted the marchers but the suffering whites were enduring as a result:

We the people of Forsyth County have been used, abused, and criticized without just reason. What ever happened to
our
civil rights? . . . The people in Forsyth County are just trying to carve out a living and build a decent place to raise our families. . . . We have not bothered the rest of the world, so why does the rest of the world want to bother us now?

Others wrote to assure the governor—despite news reports to the contrary—that the “trouble” was the work of outsiders and had nothing to do with Forsyth’s history or the majority of residents’ feelings toward blacks. As a Mrs. Hartsfield of Cumming put it,

Most of those arrested were not natives. I knew of no one who even ventured into town that day. . . . Forsyth County is by far the friendliest and safest place we could ever imagine. Everyone waves to everyone on the road. . . . This town has kept a low profile and [we] have been living in peace & harmony.
Until now
, we haven’t hurt anyone and certainly don’t want the whole country to think badly of us.

The erasure of Forsyth’s violent past had been so complete that most residents believed what Mrs. Hartsfield told the governor: that there was no place more peaceful and no place less deserving of the outrage that had followed the attacks on the Brotherhood Marchers. To people who’d spent their whole lives inside the bubble of “racial purity,” keeping Forsyth “all white” seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

18

SILENCE IS CONSENT

T
elevision viewers around the country were shocked by scenes from the First Brotherhood March: young white women yelling “Nigger!” in the faces of peaceful protesters; children joining chants of “White Power!” from atop their parents’ shoulders; civil rights leaders like Hosea Williams dodging rocks and bottles. Within days, there was talk of a second demonstration, as march organizers regrouped. Dean Carter told the
Gainesville Times
that this second march would go all the way to the county courthouse, and Sheriff Wesley Walraven promised to be ready “even if it takes 300 state troopers and every GBI agent in the state.” When forecasters called for snow on the proposed date of the protest, Hosea Williams told reporters, “We’re going to march [again] in Forsyth County whether it’s cold as ice or hot as it is in hell.”

I woke to the sound of helicopters passing over our house on the morning of January 24, 1987, and I realized just how different the second march was going to be when we were stopped at a military checkpoint just outside of Cumming and had to wait as bomb-sniffing dogs checked our car. Forsyth’s white supremacists might have dominated the headlines on January 17, but a week later it looked as if the whole county was being dragged, kicking
and screaming, into the twentieth century. This time, 1,500 jeering counterprotesters were held in check by 350 state troopers, 185 Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents, and 2,000 soldiers of the Georgia National Guard.

The Second Brotherhood March is the best-known part of Forsyth’s story, as it was covered by national and international news outlets, which broadcast images of two hundred chartered buses driving up Highway 400, bringing more than 20,000 peace marchers to Georgia’s notorious “white county.” Among those who marched were famous veterans of the 1950s and ’60s civil rights struggles, including John Lewis, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Joseph Lowery, and Coretta Scott King, who called the protest “a great coming together of the family, the movement, and the followers of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Georgia senators Sam Nunn and Wyche Fowler were near the front of the line, along with NAACP president Benjamin Hooks, U.S. presidential candidate Gary Hart, and dozens of celebrities and media personalities.

Even Miguel Marcelli, the black firefighter shot in Oscarville, made the trip from Atlanta, returning to Forsyth for the first time since he was nearly killed by Melvin Crowe and Bob Davis in 1980. “Seven years ago,” he told a reporter, “I could have been dead for no reason and never known what I was killed for. . . . But now I’m going to march for the freedom and the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.” The story of Marcelli’s return was typical of the day, which became both a reunion of the American civil rights movement and a repudiation of Forsyth’s long history of intolerance. As Reverend Joseph Lowery told locals from the steps of the courthouse, “We did not come to Forsyth County to scare you to death. We came . . . to challenge you to live a life of decency.”

When the speeches on the Cumming square were finally over, near dusk, my father, mother, sister, and I walked back to our car and watched dozens of buses, filled with weary peace marchers,
making their way out onto the blue highways of the county and back down the on-ramps toward Atlanta. All around us, national guardsmen were walking toward their operations base in a strip-mall parking lot, where they climbed into troop carriers and left in a long convoy of hulking green trucks. Eventually even the satellite news vans broke down their gear, and the army of journalists disconnected their lapel mikes, closed their notebooks, packed up their cameras, and drove away.