Watkinsville lynching

The Watkinsville lynching was a mass lynching that occurred in Watkinsville, Georgia, United States on June 30, 1905. The lynching, which saw a large mob seize 9 men from a local jail and kill 8 of them by gunfire, has been described as "one of the worst episodes of racial violence ever in Georgia."[1]

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History

In May 1905, a storekeeper named F. M. Holbrook and his wife were murdered in Oconee County, Georgia.[2] In the aftermath, one white man and three African American men were arrested,[2] with the white man accused of the murder and the three African American men accused of being accomplices to the murder.[3] They were held in the jail in Oconee County along with 6 other individuals,[4][5] all African American men held for various reasons.[3]

According to The Oconee Enterprise, local newspapers at the time praised residents of the county for "not rushing to judgment."[2] However, at midnight on June 29, a large mob of individuals, reportedly from nearby Morgan County, Georgia, organized and traveled to Oconee County.[2] At 2 a.m.[5] on June 30, 1905,[1] this large mob of between approximately 50 and 100 people[note 1] broke into the Oconee County jail.[1] The mob, consisting of white men,[4] went to the house of the town Marshal and compelled him to take them to the county jail, where the jailer relinquished the keys to the jail cells at gunpoint.[3] Afterwards, they seized 9 of the 10 prisoners, including the murder suspect, and proceeded to tie them to nearby fence posts.[4][5] One prisoner had apparently avoided the attention of the mob and was left in his cell.[5] Of the 9 men seized by the mob, only one had been convicted of a crime, while the others were awaiting trial.[5][3] After tying the men to the posts, they proceeded to open fire on the men, with the New-York Tribune reporting that "five volleys" were fired at the men.[5] Eight of the men died as a result of the gunfire,[1] while one man survived and proceeded to play dead.[5]

Following the lynching, several of the bodies were buried in the same grave, leading a historian to say in an interview with CNN that "within an hour of Atlanta is a mass grave".[1] One of the victims, Sandy Price, was identified by his mother,[1] and he is the only victim with an identified grave.[6] A photograph of the dead bodies, still tied to the fence, was taken shortly after the murders.[2]

In 2007, the lynching attracted national attention as part of a story by CNN. Following this, a group that had worked to identify the graves of the victims in the Moore's Ford lynchings, a 1946 lynching that had occurred on the border between Oconee County and Walton County, Georgia, announced that they would work to identify the unmarked graves of the Watkinsville victims.[1] In 2020, on the 115th anniversary of the lynching, a vigil was held in Watkinsville for the victims,[6] with attendees organizing at the former site of the jail and marching to the grave of Sandy Price, where they paid their respects to the victims.[4]

Notes
  1. Sources vary on the number of individuals in the group. A 1905 report in The Voice of the Negro gives the number as 100,[3] while a 2007 article in the Savannah Morning News says "at least 50 people"[1] and a 2020 story from WUGA says "as many as 50 white men".[4]

References
  1. Thompson 2007.
  2. Giles 2015.
  3. The Voice of the Negro 1905, p. 529.
  4. Ridley 2020.
  5. NAACP 1919, p. 16.
  6. WAGA-TV 2020.

Bibliography
  • Giles, Blake (June 17, 2015). "Family history clouded by murder, lynching". The Oconee Enterprise. Retrieved October 2, 2020.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. April 1919 – via Google Books.
  • Ridley, Alexia (June 26, 2020). "Remembering Victims of 1905 Mass Lynching in Watkinsville". WUGA. Retrieved October 1, 2020.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • "Our Monthly Review". The Voice of the Negro. II (8): 529–530. August 1905 – via Google Books.
  • Thompson, Adam (November 22, 2007). "Group to look for lost graves from notorious 1905 lynching". Savannah Morning News. Morris Communications. Retrieved October 2, 2020.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • "115-year anniversary of Watkinsville mass lynching". WAGA-TV. June 29, 2020. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
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