Transcripts For CSPAN2 Blood At The Root 20161229

Next 75 years. Good evening i have the president here at the center here welcoming professor and off 39 raised given Forsyth County a National Endowment for the arts and a recipient of the american scandinavian prize for the translation the poetry collection was a finalist for the National Book award. Even though were in the presence tonight discussing the book of nonfiction blood at the root a racial cleansing in america this tells a disturbing story of racial violence in the neighboring Forsyth County. Retells the story fetid is a much larger than Forsyth County to do significant work to tell people who have been erased from the historical record. Im excited to welcome a georgette native palms and after tonight the second most famous figure. [laughter] patrick phillips. [applause]. Thanks for coming everybody and for that introduction also for inviting me end ball coming me to the center. I will talk about my book called the blood at the root talks about racial cleansing of Forsyth County georgia and the place was raised in the 70s and 80s. In this important to be invited here because the last time i was here i was up to my neck in research for this book and in the archives i made a number of discovered eight discoveries and eureka of moments. Of things that dont pan out and i was here one year ago i found a couple of letters that changed my sense of the story. Also heartfelt thanks to the Archivist Library in and staff and all the donors to support this work it is a truly deserving history and books like mine and not be possible without institutions like the land history center. I hope this will turn into a conversation there are a number of people in the room that have a personal connection and it is a little different to do this in atlanta or new york. As their people that have personal involvement some regional before discussion. But some things i want to tell you about this and what racial cleansings looks like and the way that it unfolded and how i came to write the book. And i will show you pictures of people involved. So it began with my friend the teaches at emory clearly a public 20 have taken a vacation and two nonfiction but she challenged me 10 years ago to finally tell the story. So among my friends in the poetry world she is one of their rare people who when i said i was from Forsyth County that would register. As an africanamerican woman she was the head cheerleader at the university of georgia i should mention that. [laughter] the only poet laureate who was a head june leader. [laughter] a dear friend of mine her father was white her mother was a black woman and went she was born the marriage was illegal since she has written about this too would great deal. So the project really started with a latenight conversation at a professional writing conference in new york. She really surprise me by asking a startling question that i did not see coming. Why isnt that she as southern woman of color but yet i a white man from one of the most recent states and i did not even know that . Why did i never say word about lightness . Whitey think raises the subject only four black writers whitey think you are not involved . I remember this vividly it changed my life. Is started via on the search for the truth about a dose story that i had always heard growing up of Forsyth County. And i was seven my parents moved to forsyth and now it is an affluent suburb of atlanta i was back to write the book i dont recognize any of it now but i was constantly getting lost but back then it was a pretty sleepy place the lot of chicken houses and cow pastures more of the appellation foothills then suburban atlanta up. I felt strange when i got there as a seven yearold unlike there were no black people anywhere is on the school bus pulled what they heard from their parents and grandparents along time ago a white girl was raped and killed by black men her body was found in the woods a few miles from the house where i grew up. Was told why forsyth was all white and according to my classmates it always would be. So zero and january 87 there was a place in north georgia segregation was alive and well. Nil march or blast away caught 1987 that my family took part in any event that foresight have ever seen that had kept the county all white 75 years and would coincide with the Second Annual Martin Luther king david is easy to forget now but that was controversial so a guy who had moved to the county from california than with shock that none of his friends of color would come visit him came up with the fairly modest plan to march the 2 miles bank into cummings with every speeches celebrating dr. King and the idea was to speak out against the intimidation from forsyth. But then there was an angry mob of surrounding the marchers that the activist one of the generals of the Civilrights Movement and joined by a small handful of locals. Sister was home from college and brought this to my parents attention. They will lead eventually they had to be disbanded when they frisked them they found they were armed but the county police convince them to abandon the march they all got back on the bus and headed back to atlanta. Except my parents and my sister sitting on the side of the road with their car in the distance with angry white people between them and the car. Eventually they were into a Police Cruiser then drove home but my dad said double check the locks. This is a photograph january january 17 with john lewis leading bought marchers in 1965 in selma. So this is moving that 22 years later in the exact same situation and foresight. I was 16 that year like a typical teenager i was late to meet my parents. I cannot figure out where the march was then started to look for my parents daniel would conclude at the courthouse so when theyre expecting to appear speakers finally speaking out about all of this. But i found other young men walking toward the courthouse and only when one of them held up the newest ballet realized i was not in the middle of a peace march laugh laugh but i had stumbled my way into the middle of the kkk victory celebration i thought that id remember this vaguely that is probably exaggeration for quite a lot think anybody had aid news but i was with a photographer and she sent me a batch of photographs and one eyed click on this one i could not believe it because i do remember this guy i was standing very close to where that total was taken at that moment. And dan world georgia in the 70s there was a lot of racial slurs and jokes and what we consider bad behavior but this did not seem runofthemill is seen out there to me one week later 20,000 people came to forsyth. And suddenly theres attention focused on its even Oprah Winfrey diffuse kugel forsyth issue is only six month into your show shoes sitting on the square. Once the National Media picked up the story my home town became known as one the most racist places in america last bastion of jim crow segregation so fast forward to decades and i was a long way from my childhood in georgia living in new york having a conversation starting a fight could learn the truth of ago story because it was always told the navy a ganed mythic term of a murdered girl like uh kkk but i just wondered if it was a racist fantasy that kid like to talk about but when i typed forsyth 1912 into the database up came the list of headlines of a 80 yearold woman raped and killed allegedly by three black men. Here is a photograph of her round 1912. Deadend this was me playing hooky with the graduate work with the bubonic plague galbraith i was bored and tired of reading my dissertation was sitting at the computer terminal that had all of this information and things were coming online 2005 and archives were scanning all this information so long with that was newspaper so this story i always imagined as murky started to come into view. So this is the pitcher that came up with the land the constitution. October 2nd, 1912 at the time i did know who these were. James and her brother oscar and ernest who was 16 and these two boys would eventually be paying for those murders but i did not know any of that when i first saw the picture. But it was something i could not escape as i would scan across the photograph i knew a raise more questions than it answered. So which to end if they were accused of raping and killing her then what about the others . Did black people ever really live n forsythe . The image made me realize the image was riddled with lives and bigotry that was a terrible reality. Real people that this season of violence of all 1,098 residence as i learned more began to understand how names and dates and places always made racial cleansing seemed only alleges like something we would never fully understand rather than a deliberate and sustained campaign of terror. I came upon this very early being led through the streets of the atlanta with a doctor on the train for their trial but getting a first look at the photographs gave me hope that might be possible to learn through those refugees then what really happened to them in the fall of 1912. Searching for every scrap by could find through the archives even the ledgers in the basement of the county courthouse in disneyland historys center bomb Atlanta History Center not only what happened but howl and uh devil was in the details. This is the photograph of the children. The book made out of the material tells the true story of the legend and this speaks of a murdered girl a public lynching, a trial and execution of the teenage boys and with that which succeeded in closing the forsythe borders to nonwhites for nearly a century including the county sheriff i did not tell you but i am guessing you can tell food is the villain. [laughter] well like this pitcher i thought definitely. The characters included the county sheriff who a few years later would found the local chapter of the kkk as well was unexpected heroes and a deputy to try desperately to stop the violence and held up a lynch mob at the courthouse. But at the heart of the story is the africanamerican farmers farmers, and field hands merchants and a service that were forced out. Theyve vanished civilization and now lost forever. By have come to know more about them than he ever thought possible. Here is the largest black Property Owner in the county he was a real leader in the community. The black community was a monolithic very poor or marginal sharecropper and there were plenty of people like that including oscar danielles but there was also educated property owning africanamerican citizen steeply ems with the culture of the elite white people in the county. This is the White Community and the black community and one that is a core sample maybe we could suggest coming to grips and that was working on the of book of the true reconciliation hearing with the corrosive effects of denial and the healing power of tourists. And to think i was dredging up in the comments section but such people seem to want the reward of the Peace Process without paying the price. When i started to surge by found the of miff contained omissions or outright lies in hard to made to shield from really happened but that is a terrible communal crime. Also but i eight learned the regional it was reconstituted 1958. In the wake i learned that the nine raiders was actually and with of birth of a nation. That modern clan that is from the and the merry around so to come out to watch the film with the masks. That is imagination. But the rebirth of us kkk as the rebirth of the future summit is impossible that the campaign now terrorism and i had another year rica moment with something but then all hell broke loose you were not plant. And how did they drive out to more than 7,000 of their neighbors . 12th. [laughter] hold on a second. So how did they manage representing almost 10 percent of the county population . I found one startling example from the governor of georgia at the very outset to and did this a document from the Atlanta History Center collection. With a longtime resident after sharing reports of lawlessness you wrote directly to the governor to make sure brown understood the conviction of Oscar Daniels and the situation was growing worse but but i desire to call your attention to is the citizens of georgia. Of those and this seems to say our cowards and fearful. But those that were visited and that the women were not armed. Five men but they would ask if the women had any guns. With a fount they found one they shot the doug but then they would burn that dogs and all. And the image of a young mother as the local households and it could be an implanted due to the violence. Hundreds of acres would not be plowed which is a loss to the states and counties. This state of affairs could go on even with the restores race wars. So pursuit and arrest offenders and prosecute vigorously. But to share the anxiety of the consequences the governor was steadfast this is of problem by local people but then down letter helped me to see for the first time thats expulsion unfair burden fan. The i had an explanation but now people say it has notorious but to defend the white man and of the county of a rampage. But this 24 yearold instead was dragged from the county jail beaten and hung from a telephone pole and i should say this is the same square on the fourth of july parade where i bought my first baseball glove and now you could go there you will not find any sign or marker or remembrance. Hundreds of flights buying a pistol and also something i did not know. A winching where hundreds of people participated lead to other prisoners, seven. But the alleged damage who would lead the abduction and the hanging of a man three years later. If you novio franks story that led up to the Antidefamation League and the kkk really he is the ringleader. Again and again the archives told a very different story from the legend i heard as a kid. Id been led to believe the black community was made up entirely of poor marginal illiterate field hands of tax records reveal the whole strata of the black community that was educated, prosperous and deeply enmeshed in the county. There was joseph who had been born a slave but along with his wife eliza slowly and steadily amassed a large property and forsyth. They grew to more than 200 acres so i called followed them from slavery to emancipation to owning a tiny bit of land and over the course of you know 30 years, 40 or simply investing the prophets of each new harvest and buying a little more land and making shrewd business deals. They eventually had built this 200acre farm but it happened over a very long time. This was undoubtedly home. They were deeply, deeplyrooted in the county. There was also burt oliver. There he is. A local minister and teacher who was he and his wife founded the Industrial High School in gainesville which for 40 years was one of the most africanamerican schools of north georgia. Finally there was Levi Greenlee a black minister who wants 120 acres in the county and late in his life was inducted as the first only black member group of white clergyman called the high tor Baptist Association i should add im very honored to have three of Levi Greenlees descendents with us here. Deidre Stewart Charles levi growth and [applause] their generosity and kindness to me when i was a total stranger calling to ask about their family is typical of the many descendents i interviewed and meeting the great grandchildren and great great grandchildren of forsyths community has been one of the reports of this work. I could never have told the story without their help. All these discovers in the courthouse as libraries and archives of georgia helped expose the falseness of the very can demand old lie. All the black refugees have been marginal and never all and much in the county anyway so their expulsion was no major crime. This was implied and said overly as a kid. Instead i learned large and prosperous owners like kellogg and Levi Greenlee who were written driven out not by klansmen but ordinary white men they had known and worked with all their lives. Which brings us finally to the most fraught issue of bone that is the question of land and reparation. In 1987 in the wake of the violent brotherhood marches governor Joe Frank Harris appointed a Biracial Committee to investigate the history of violence in forsyth and to look into the charge of quote unlawfully taken land. I want to read a brief package that will give you a sense of how the community worked an entirely controversial finding. The story really faded from the News Headlines so i never knew what what came up with. Made a lot of headlines when there is violence but it took a year for this committee to go through its work and i had never seen their findings until i was working on this. Only week after these cameras are great shocking scenes of mob violence in january 17, 1987 the meeting rooms of the Forsyth County courthouse were filled with racial strife that is local lawyers and businessmen the notion that jose winds of black people he represented deserved anything at all from the county. Harris eventually settled the dispute over the makeup of the forsyth Biracial Committee by appointing six members favorable acceptable by Jose Williams commission at the atlanta civil rights leaders. The coming Forsyth County Biracial Committee meant many times over the next month passed by the governor in the improving Race Relations the county investigating events of 1912 through the most striking thing about the official report the committee submitted to governor harris is that it contained not one set of bindings for two one position paper written by local white members and other written by the coalitions mostly black atlantabased members. In other words even after working together from a threeyear the two races were as divided as ever in forsyth and above all in the very first issue they discussed reparations for the victims of 1912 so that documents are from the georgia archives and it contains a black reporter and white report to the governor. The Committee Many who are Property Owners reject the idea of paying monetary reparations and they wrote at length about the fear that the man had stirred up in the community. Forsyth members said in their position papers of racial incidents allegedly drove a substantial number of lacks from the confines of forsyth but they claimed quote economics played an instrumental role in the black exodus. They argue the efund of the boll weevil in 1915 early signs of the depression and ive never really figured out what that is talking about the quote shifting of the black population certainly had an equal impact on blacks leaving. Their in their view most of forsyths 1098 black refugees quote relocated voluntarily. I had a moment when i read that and i sat on the floor of my living room and i thought my head is going to explode. Despite the denial of men like phil the local title attorney the denial had been when journalist Elliott Jansen was working 2007 he discovered a mountain of evidence that the land of black owners have been plundered as abandoned lots were slowly quietly absorbed into the property of their former white neighbors. Ironic we the written record for houston abatement basement of the county courthouse underneath the rooms in which the Biracial Committee. They concluded the charge of unlawfully taken land is an allegation without sufficient foundation in law or fact. Today many of the same lots her home not to chicken houses cow pastures and hotpants but suburban Housing Developments filled with milliondollar homes through what was once taken within a week and a nod at the county courthouse has now become some of the most valuable real estate in all of atlanta. After rejecting joses demands for change the position paper the white leader submitted to the governor descendents of expelled families themselves. The report blamed them for quote perpetuating divisive and contrite issues. And for harassing local whites with a never pointing finger of blame which the report said fosters deep and perhaps volatile resentment. Having turned the tables and lay the blame on divisive africanamerican protesters the white leaders called on blacks blacks intimidation to the report ended by declaring that forsyth suburb of atlanta with no similarities in 1912 forsyth has no apologies to make to anyone. Forsyth county also has no handouts, only welcoming hand of fairness and effort that has built this county for over 150 years. The rest of the White Committee members to believe they have no apologies to make to anyone suggest ways in which denial was not just a product of racism by the primary cause of it. By wiping the crimes the pass out of memory generations otherwise lawabiding white citizens when im believing that each new violent episode was an extraordinary event for which they bore no real responsibility. Every american members of the committee recognized the role of denial and forsyths bigotry and they said as much is in the competing report today seems to be a prevailing philosophy in forsyth Road Committee member felker award that if undesirable activity of hatemongers and violence prone is ignored it will simply go away. The fact is however seven of the people arrested and charged after the first march were forsyth residents. Such denial and inaction allows for the growth and spread of hatred. Silence is interpreted as consent. It was a long tradition of silence denial and erasure that motivated to write blood at the root first place. Such outlet hope to find in the library of book that would tell the whole story of 1912 and i started this project when i realized no one else was going to write it and if i wanted the truth about what happened i would have to look at myself. Many black owners sold early given that they were no position to bargain and others like joe kellogg held on to their lead in hopes of coming back someday and sold it reluctantly when it became clear the white county of forsyth was no place for black men about me there were owners who left with nothing in exchange for the landed his property theres simply no record of the sale. In 1987 forsyth news claim there was no evidence for which he discovered the lot numbers of many of the quote abandoned black properties mysteriously reappeared in later transactions. Id always imagined a shotgun but instead it seems they happen with little more than a wink and a nod at the county courthouse has one clerk after another ignored history and allowed whites to sell parcels of land they did not own. The crimes against the black people of forsyth the ratio happens slowly and quietly in one of the time. After working on the story for many years its shocking to me to go home to forsyth and see how successfully these events have been written out of mind. Much has changed last 30 years in the countys 10 latino time a person nation and 3 africanamerican. I was astonished in part to learn a few months ago and africanamerican candidate is currently running for state senate seat in forsyth and im honored to have him here tonight as well my friend Daniel Blackmon whos running to represent georgias 27th congressional district. Mr. Blackmon is on the ballot in the notorious county of forsyth is a testament for just how much it has changed that there still a lot of work to do and im rooting for daniel to win. On november 8 because if he does forsyth might finally have a leader who will acknowledge the counties history and put an end to more than 100 years of erasure in denial. In reckoning with his pass and honoring of the africanamerican families who once called forsyth home. Im going to read just one more excerpt near the very end of the book. If you drive around cummings today and some of you probably have you will see more than a few black and brown vases among the white ones. People of color working and shopping and forsyth counties towards walking the streets of the town square and sending their children to local schools. We wont find is a single trace of 1912 for an acknowledged that racial cleansing that defined the county for most of the 20th century. Instead the timeless tamir of american suburbia is so completely covered over the past where not even the young black and women working the cash registers seem to realize that war our site was quote white only a few decades ago where the ground and they are some of the subdivisions and big talk stores belonged to ernest hardworking black man. The bank remembered oliver among victims better portraits in the countys charcoal society and no marker anywhere tells new black residents they are far from the first africanamericans to live in forsyth. Instead gazing over the square is a largerthanlife bronze statue of hiram parksville. You will hear in a second. Hiram parks bell confederate congressman u. S. Representative and selfdescribed defender of white over black domination. The native son whose most famous only washington came when king david calla pool was a visiting head of state in november of 1874. He spoke before congress a representative from from georgia hard parksville was over her jet into a college that in the good old days of slavery became quote would have brought 1500 on the block. Bell succeeded by the end of his term in reversing all the gains that africanamericans have made under congressional reconstruction and at the end of the day colonel bell as he was called was proud of having stop what he called a folly, attempted social revolution to place africanamericans on equality with quotations. I should add that the statue is new. The statue is on a corner and you will find the countys newfound wealth everywhere come towering courthouse in the county jail branches of major banks that nothing will point you to the spot where the corpse of rob edwards hung from a telephone pole in 1912. Nowhere is there photograph of the same street filled with Government Troops to quell its recurring state of insurrection. If history is written by the victors 100 years after the expulsion of victorious white people of forsyth have successfully written racial cleansing completely out of mind and for anyone familiar with the times of 1912 might expect to find signs of reflection, apology and even truth and reconciliation there is only deafening silence. Now that they have joined a brave new world of atlanta and the roof ordered with a level of wealth their dirt farming hog killing mule driving ancestors could never have imagined is clear to most natives of forsyth would prefer to leave his hold tale of murder, lynching death and terror scattered in the states dusty archives or safely hidden in plain sight. His place only known to the dwindling handful of people who are still remembered the stories they heard at some alzheimers fee paid in closing i want to make the case for white americans to take up the challenge that tasha gave to me nearly a decade ago which was to delve and that the history of home and to seek out the truth about the injustices that shaped so many places in this country whether through overt violence like in forsyth or covert forms of bigotry like redlining whites only covenance unemployment and lending discrimination. I know talking about race and feel like a minefield in 2016. Never imagined i would be a peer talking about it. Like a lot of people i spend much of my life until now tiptoeing around the subject and trying to uphold a hippocratic oath, do no harm give no offense. Although i have a faint southern drawl and that might be debatable and talking to people of color i seldom forget i wear the face not of victims and bystanders but white male perpetrators. For a long time a approach discussions of race with anxiety both in person and on the page. When i finally began probing beneath the surface of my homes prosperous allamerican white veneer i found the soil rich with the ashes of black farmhouses, black schools and once thriving black churches. I can now see my long silence on the subject wasnt respectful or polite as i used to pretend. Instead, i was being woefully dangerously incurious about the real history of my home. It took decades before i finally woke up and began asking the right questions and is difficult and painful as it was to learn what the refugees of forsyth endured writing the book gave me an unexpected glimmer of hope that should then reconciliation might still be possible in america even in places like forsyth where prosperity rests on a foundation of arson expulsion and theft. To begin healing the ancient ones i believe white americans must finally turn and face are profound involvement in the struggle for equality and cultivated deep curiosity about what really happened in the 20th century in a seemingly innocent places where we live. James baldwin said the architects of injustice cannot also be innocent. It is the innocent that constitutes the crime. In 2016 with racial strife threatening to tear apart committees across the nation i believe they can no longer afford to remain ignorant of how our ancestors violent past gave birth to this file and present. I want to thank you all very much for listening and for coming and im hopeful this might generate some conversation i think we are going to open it up for questions. Again thanks to the Atlanta History Center and thanks to cspan for covering the event and thanks to all of you for coming and for listening. [applause] im afraid we cant leave Hiram Parks Bell up there. Please raise your hand and i will bring the microphone here. Can i come down there . All right, that would be better. Then im not mike . I get it, like jerry springer. [laughter] or better yet, like oprah. Whats that . I had better get back up there. Id rather be a man of the people but all right. Racs fan, im back. Thank you again. I am told that you cant rewrite history but im torn between two things. [inaudible] the Political Party that gave rise to this is in the past. You mentioned the nation and that stoked energy into the plan but it was i guess that part of history. The other thing is history and how it repeats itself. This was about skin color and was portrayed as being more demonized. Today we have trump being demonized worthy of belief in christianity or you believe in in that are being demonized. Im going to try to pick up on a few things you said. Im not sure i can untangle the yoga move that the Democratic Party does in the course of 20 century but i do understand what you are saying and certainly i would not want to claim in the book to have gotten to the bottom of exactly where all of this comes from. I got very interested in once it was going how is it perpetuated for so long and what happened in Forsyth County 1912 has to be situated in the context of jim crow south of a race baiting Democratic Party of the time. I totally agree with all of that but whats interesting is the same kind of effort happened across the cavarrici river in 1912. Happen a lot of places in america and i got very interested in why succeeded in Forsyth County because whats thats forsyth at apart is not that it happened in 1912 was still happening when i lived there in 1987 and really than 90 90 the early 90s. That requires a tremendous amount of energy across generations. There requires a transition so i was interested not just an a need and certainly explain this from the context of the period whats happening and thats what i heard a lot in forsyth as a kid, thats just how wasnt and thats how it happened. It happens a lot of places. Upon county when there was not writing during the same period the local sheriff said the deputy who pursued, arrested, charged and tried and convicted and jailed the white men who did it and their names were printed in the front page of the paper and later the sheriff said to me told reporter we dont need troops to stop this. We are going to crush this thing in its infancy and by simply engaging the law that was exactly what happened. It was an attempt to do the same thing. In Forsyth County theres no record of an arrest and no record of any Legal Mechanism ever engaging in response to any of the crimes against people of color there when they were perpetrated by white people. So i do understand what you are saying it does come from a complicated period at the same time i dont buy the argument that thats just how things were in georgia at the time. There were people who were trying to stop it in forsyth and people who succeeded in the hall county. Hi thanks for coming in being here tonight. Thanks for coming. I should say tell them who wish her greatgrandfather . He was the little baby. Right here . That deserves a hand. Thats incredible. What is your name . Thanks for coming and thanks for telling us that. And listening to you talk about statue that was recently erected i dont know how long ago it tore me a little bit because there is a lot going on in the country and im a mother. [inaudible] [inaudible] so how do we move forward in this kind of strife that feels like the 1920s having to have a conversation with my son . How can we move forward and how do we have intelligent conversations so we are not the only ones that feel it because thats the way i feel that only i know that it hurts and my son knows that it hurts. But no one else does. E, thank you so much for that comment and for sharing all of that. When you say what was going on there feels like its still going on i was watching the news about eric arner and mike brown and trayvon martin. One of the things that i couldnt shake was mike brown was known as big mike and eric garner was a big man. Staten island is very close and rob edwards the man who was lynched in or said county was known as big rob edwards. When i saw these cases happening over the last year i just could not shake the parallels that these were large men and there seemed to be this insane targeting of them simply because they were tall, like exactly what you say. There are sociologists who have done research on the lynching statistics and this is not imaginary. Mobs frequently targeted large men who often came from somewhere else. If they didnt have kin that were nearby they were targeted and that certainly join Forsyth County that i dont have a solution for a race in america who you know. I think only a fool would suggest that. I dont have a solution but what i found from this, the one thing that motivated this book as i had faith in the particular and specific and that the devil is in the details and it mattered who, what, where, when, why and how. And that microscopic hourbyhour look at one place i dont have an answer for how we reconcile but i think i have are vital for people who want reconciliation without the truth and i became convinced that there are a lot of people in White Community america who would like forgiveness and would like reconciliation but dont want to do that hard, hard typical work of turning and facing the reality of it. I think as a result you have people who dont know any of this so you have people with two very different american histories, two different understandings of the 20th century and those two different understandings of what its like to walk around in 2016. I dont have an answer. I wish i did but i have a faith that the truth is some part of it and i felt the only thing i could possibly add to this overwhelming problem most one small piece of literature. [inaudible] im sorry, i will. I name is bob hays in and several months before the 1987 march i moved into Forsyth County and have children. We had a volleyball team. We had decided to go and see this march. There were Death Threats to the original person who wanted to start this march. I told my 13yearold son and my wife about this and as we were waiting we went over to get a cup of hot chocolate. [inaudible] [inaudible] the sheriff told us we had to get out. I sat next to his daughter. Elizabeth, yeah. [inaudible] i had the same exact experience that your sister and mother and father have that i didnt know was going to happen. Fortunately we got back. The thing i wanted to say i want to honor the people who are here but to the question about what to do about it, and the people on the committee would not let rozaian. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] the point of it was over the next few weeks it became so obvious that this whole idea that this didnt have anything to do with and that was very demoralizing. I have lived there for 18 years in Forsyth County and i have relatives and inlaws there and all of the talk and these are relatives, all the talk in the 90s and beyond is totally embracing it. Thats our world today. Thank you so much for sharing memories of being there. I have talked to so many people since the book is come out who are part of the time and want to pick up on one thing that you said and that is the idea that the kind of Wishful Thinking that maybe its all over and i was astonished when i looked at the records to find this went all the way back to the very beginning. Newspaper articles over and over and over again that last paragraph of the article would say no further trouble expected. I read this among every decade almost when there was an incident and i understand the concept of Wishful Thinking out of the desire to say maybe thats it for now its out of our system and we are going to be done with it. I still found this when i was looking at comments on the Atlanta Journal to leave us alone. There was a story where wright arguello, my Elementary School is paying for this guide was the person of the bank of cummings. When there was an incident in 1968 he reported they would just leave us alone this would all be okay. He said at the 1968 having witnessed it witnessed it in 1812 and he said if you leave it alone it will all go away so that was the idea i was writing on. And everyone hear me . Cspan they not be able to hear you. Cspan rules. I thank you for documenting everything. What i wanted to ask you is your research and perhaps looking at census records do you find a date at which migration of africanamericans began in forsyth . My understanding is there were student organizations of the kkk it wouldnt be surprised by the question is a good one and this is what my friends in new york say, how is it then that when did it and . There is not a day, theres a sociologist at the university named dave accel and he wrote an art when at the end he said, his conclusion was the tsunami of the Planet Development is just roaring out of all just roaring out of all directions but certain point it breaks the washes over the county and the population 87 was about 30,000 has over 200,000 today. That means your family and the county were just outnumbered at a certain point. The good news is that happen in the bad news is nobodys hearts and minds were changed i dont think. There were so many newcomers in the county and his conclusions he said that racial ban died a natural death. I think around 2000 census but even that is very gradual. In the 90s at one point there are 600 black residents and their all at the southern edge of the county near johns creek in suwanee which i think essentially people who lived across the county line because it looks like any other part of the plan at that point and at this point in daniel may know better than i do. 4. 6 africanamerican but im not actually ready to give any buddy a goldmedal that there is a black population tolerated in the county. I think its an interesting question is about change and all i can come up with is the growth and the arrival of so many new people into the county. This will be our last question. Thank you for your research. Thank you for coming. Indeed the devil is in the details. The original event that started this whole issue. Im not going to lie i wish i could tell you i have solved the crime. I dont know. I couldnt say this in the book because i didnt want to say anything in book that couldnt document. Im proud of their 35 pages of notes in the back but i didnt want anything that someone could claim was Poetic License for my opinion. I base it on the facts. I didnt have the cold hard facts to make the claim that i found overwhelming evidence that the three men who were hung, it does not say that in the book because i did not want to go out on that limb buds robin was lynch. Oscar daniels and harris who described his fiendish commentary after you this but the lowbrow guerrilla type b. Gross fiendish and then you see the picture. There is Oscar Daniels there. Handcuffed and i dont know if you can see it in this light by the earnest knox was 16 years old. He worked as a hired man from the time he was 14 so he is a hired man and his cousin oscar second from the left 18 years old and they are just dwarfed by the grown men in the militia. Im not saying that automatically they are innocent oscar daniel and ernest knox when you look at the census records were the three young black men in the area and their trial was conducted by a lynn sherr and the sheriff the rest of them is the future founder of the. Ernest knox infection which was the main thing of the trial was delivered while he was being lynched so i feel sadder and sadder the more i read it. I wish i could have exonerated him in a court of law by finding out who did it but theres no