On December 23, 1936, the body of a 40-year-old Black man who had been lynched named Mack Henry Brown was found floating at the confluence of Roswell’s Vickery Creek and the Chattahoochee River. Mr. Brown, who lived and worked at an apartment house in Atlanta, had been missing for over…
Lynchings of African Americans occurred with alarming frequency throughout the United States, including Troup County and surrounding areas. For decades, racial violence was a fact of life. African Americans were denied basic security of person and property. Fear of police, courts, and night-riding terrorists was powerful. In fall 1940, historic…
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…
After Reconstruction was abandoned in 1877, white mobs from Lithonia terrorized the Black community through lynchings that denied Black people their constitutional rights and equal protection under the law. On July 27, 1887, a white mob from Lithonia lynched Reuben Hudson near the Georgia Railroad stop in Redan. Mr. Hudson…
On September 4, 1889, a white mob abducted a 14-year-old Black boy named Warren Powell in East Point, Georgia, and lynched him. Earlier that afternoon, a white girl reported being assaulted by a Black male. White men in the area soon began “hunting” for the alleged assailant. When they found…
On the morning of September 24, 1906, the body of a 30-year-old Black man named Zeb Long was found hanging from a tree in East Point.Two days earlier, a mob of at least 5,000 white men and boys began terrorizing and violently attacking Black men, women, and children in the…