Lynching in America / The Lynching of Porter Turner

Marker Text: On the night of August 20, 1945, Porter Flournoy Turner, a 50-year- old Black Atlanta taxi driver, was lynched near this site. Born in Greensboro, Georgia, Mr. Turner was a wage-earning farm laborer for his family by age 14 before moving to Atlanta’s Fourth Ward in 1920. Mr. Turner worked 60 hours a week as a mechanic and porter at an auto dealership and full-service garage. He supplemented his income to support his wife and two sons by driving a white-owned taxi at night. On the morning of August 21, Mr. Turner’s body was found brutally stabbed to death in the chest and back on the front lawn of a white physician’s home on Springdale Road. The cab he had been driving was abandoned on the curb across the street. DeKalb Police conducted only a cursory investigation. In June 1946, it became clear that Mr. Turner had been a victim of lynching violence after undercover informants working with Georgia’s Assistant Attorney General announced that members of the Klavalier Klub – a strong arm of the Ku Klux Klan tasked with terroristic raids – had boasted during a covert meeting of killing him. During this era, the Atlanta Klan, police departments, and white taxi owners conspired to protect white economic control. Financial independence made Black people vulnerable to violent retaliation. Despite the new evidence of who committed the murder, no one was ever arrested or held accountable for Mr. Turner’s lynching.