MARY TURNER A TWENTY YEAR-OLD BLACK WOMAN FROM GEORGIA, JUST WATCHED IN HORROR

Mary Turner, a twenty year-old black woman from Georgia, just watched in horror as her husband been killed in a lynching rampage. 

Mary made the mistake of publicly objecting to the angry crowd of whites responsible for her husband's murder. Her voice alone enraged the local men and they came after her.  Mary fled for her life, and for the life of her unborn child.  Mary Turner was roughly eight months pregnant at the time of her husbands murder.

For many African Americans growing up in the South in the 19th and 20th centuries, the threat of lynching was commonplace. The "popular" image of an angry white mob stringing a black man up to a tree is only half the story. Lynching...an act of terror meant to spread fear among blacks...served the broad social purpose of maintaining white supremacy in the economic, social and political spheres.  Most victims of lynching were political activists, labor organizers or black men and women who violated white expectations of black deference, and were deemed "uppity" or "insolent." Though most victims were black men, women were by no means exempt.

In May of 1918, a 31 year old White plantation owner in Brooks County, Georgia named Hampton Smith, was shot and killed by Sydney Johnson, one of his Black workers. Hampton Smith was known for abusing and beating his workers to the point that few people in the area would work for him. To solve this labor shortage, Smith turned to the debt peonage system of the day and found a ready labor pool. He used that system by bailing people out of jail, people typically arrested for petty offenses, and having them work off their debt (the bail money) to him on his plantation. Nineteen year old Sydney Johnson was arrested for "rolling dice" and fined thirty dollars.  He was one such unfortunate persons. Immediately after Johnson shot and killed Hampton, Johnson fled the area.

What ensued after the shooting was a mob driven man hunt for Johnson and others thought to be involved in his decision to kill Hampton. The man hunt lasted for more than a week and resulted in the deaths of at least 13 people.  Some historical accounts suggesting a higher number of persons killed.

One of the people killed was a woman named Mary Turner.

Mary fled for her life only to be caught and taken to a place called Folsom's Bridge on the Brooks and Lowndes Counties' shared border. To punish her, the mob tied Mary Turner by her ankles, hung her upside down from an Oak tree, and doused her with gasoline. The mob lit her on fire and watched the flames burn off her clothes.

One member of the mob came up to her burning body with a knife and cut her stomach open and her unborn child dropped to the ground,letting out two cries before a participant of the mob stomped on and crushed the baby to death.  

Mary Turner and the baby were brutally murdered.

If that wasn't enough, Mary's body was then riddled with gunfire from the white mob. Later that night she and her baby were buried ten feet away from where they were murdered. The makeshift grave was marked with only a "whiskey bottle" with a "cigar" stuffed in its neck.

Three days after the murder of Mary Turner and her baby, three more bodies were found in the area, and Sydney Johnson was killed in a shoot out with police on South Troup Street in Valdosta, Georgia. Once killed, the mob like crowd of more than 700 white animalistic men, women and children, cut off Johnson's body parts and threw them into the street. A rope was then tied to his neck and his decimated body was drug for 16 miles to Campground Church in Morven, Georgia. There, what remained of his body was burned.

During and shortly after this chain of events, it was reported that 13 black people lost their lives in a lynching form or another, and more than 500 blacks and minority people fled Lowndes and Brooks Counties in fear for their lives.

Large groups of white men would proudly get photographed standing next to the dead black men hanging in a tree, much like you'd see a proud privileged fisherman being photographed next to his prize catch.  "I don't understand that mind set at all!"

"Some may ask, why bring up "the past" especially these atrocities? "It happened so long ago."

The story of these crimes should be brought up and face them for many reasons. We should bring them up to acknowledge the lives lost, along with the reality that no justice has ever occurred for the victims, their families and so many others affected by these events.

We should bring them up because few in the region speak publicly about these events yet wonder why race relations in the area are often so strained.

We should bring them up because these events remain one of the most gruesome cases of racism and racial terrorism in this nation's history, yet they are omitted from the history being taught to our children. 

Thanks for reading, leave your thought in the comment section below.