About this item
"Gripping and meticulously documented." -- Don Schanche Jr., Washington PostForsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century, was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and children. But then in September of 1912, three young black laborers were accused of raping and murdering a white girl. One man was dragged from a jail cell and lynched on the town square, two teenagers were hung after a one-day trial, and soon bands of white "night riders" launched a coordinated campaign of arson and terror, driving all 1,098 black citizens out of the county. The charred ruins of homes and churches disappeared into the weeds, until the people and places of black Forsyth were forgotten.
About the Author
PATRICK PHILLIPS' first book of nonfiction, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America, was published by W. W. Norton in September, 2016. He is also is the author of three books of poems, including Chattahoochee, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Elegy for a Broken Machine, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Among his other honors are Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, and the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also translator of When We Leave Each Other: Selected Poems of Henrik Nordbrandt. Phillips teaches at Stanford University.
