MILLEN, Ga. — Around the bend of a rural
road in Eastern Georgia, towering pines give way to a gnatty glade
dotted with aging tombstones and floral bouquets. Secluded and serene,
it was the site of a horrific racial trauma.
A
century ago, a white lynch mob set fire to an African-American church
on this land just north of Millen, Ga., sending hundreds of black
parents and their children scrambling out of windows in a frantic effort
to escape. The mob, which was out to avenge the killing of two white
law enforcement officers, would lynch at least three black males,
including a 13-year-old, and leave the Carswell Grove Baptist Church in
an ashy heap.
It is a little-known
piece of history in a community where Southern politeness can mask
racial strife. But on the centennial anniversary of the attack in 1919,
efforts to acknowledge what happened have created unlikely allies.
Among those who
gathered last year in advance of the anniversary to commemorate the
church burning and lynchings were black residents whose ancestors were
victims of the violence, and members of the Sons of Confederate
Veterans, an organization for those whose ancestors fought in the
Confederate army.
The attack in Millen
was among the first in a series of clashes across the country in one of
the bloodiest — yet largely forgotten — seasons of racial violence in
American history. From Elaine, Ark., to Chicago to Washington, hundreds
of black people died in more than two dozen separate incidents during
what is now known as the Red Summer.
Beyond the
lynchings, that violent summer became notable for another tactic that
white mobs used to strike at the heart of African-American communities:
attacking black churches just as they were emerging as the center of
black life in America.
Carswell Grove
was one of more than a dozen churches burned in three Georgia counties
that summer, according to various media accounts.
The attacks on
black churches have not ended entirely up until today. Four years ago,
Dylann Roof killed nine African-American churchgoers who had gathered
for Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in
Charleston, S.C. This past spring, three African-American churches were
burned in central Louisiana over 10 days. It is being investigated as a
hate crime.
“The black church was the
most formidable structure in the community,” said Geoff Ward, associate
professor of African and African-American Studies at Washington
University in St. Louis who documents
historical acts of racial violence. “So physically, the structure, this
monument to black achievement, would have been offensive to white
supremacist sensibilities. And of course, its loss would be devastating,
the memory of the burnings carried by its survivors.”
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