The Sundown Counties of Georgia
- Webmaster
- Apr 5, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 15
The history of violence, especially when used to protect tradition, and/or fighting against a centralized power structure is frequently found in the historical record. A common perception is that all, if not nearly all of the violence committed by vigilantes groups in the United States was inspired by racism. (K.K.K., Christian Nationalist Movement, Black Panthers) And while this is historically accurate, the anti-revenuer groups of North Georgia during the late 1800s did fit the profile.
Shortly after the Civil War, the Southern economy was struggling. Most farmers in North Georgia depended heavily on their cash crops. i.e. peaches, apples, and corn used to make whiskey. This was especially evident in the smaller population counties with mountainous terrain. Unlike other parts of the Georgia, Pickens, Gilmer, and Fannin Counties had no local access to railroad transportation for commerce or travel until the mid-1880s. Before the Civil War, distilleries had not been routinely taxed since the War of 1812. When whiskey taxes were reinstated, many farmers viewed them as an intrusion into their lives and livelihoods.
The emancipation of slaves added another layer of competition to the southern farmer. Freedmen still could work the fields, but now required pay in return. And while many former slaves did not own their land, they were free to work for whoever would hire them. In 1865, your neighbor might have a former slave of yours as a hired hand. As history teaches us, the scarcity of resources invariably increases tension.
Eventually, taking the lead from the Klu Klux Klan of Murray County, northern vigilante groups took on different names, but with similar organizational structures. Captains, Lieutenants, and other officers and regular members were assigned pseudonyms. As with the original KKK, they all took blood oaths. Some of the local vigilante groups from the North Georgia Counties follow:
In Murray County, the group was called the Distillers Union
In Gordon County, the group was called the Gordon Grangers
In Gilmer County, the group was called the Working Men's Friend and Protective Organization
In Pickens County, the group was called the Honest Man's Friend and Protector
In other counties, the names of vigilante groups have been lost to time.
Looking at the census data in other Georgia counties you'll discover that Cherokee, Cobb, Dawson, Fannin, Forsyth, Hall, Towns, and Union Counties had precipitous drops (some 23% in Cherokee County) in their African American populations between 1900 and 1920.
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It is important to know that after the KKK's was termporily destroyed by the government around 1870, the creation of vigilante groups in North Georgia filled a power vacuum before the KKK's rebirth in 1915.
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The Klu Klux Klan was formed circa 1866 by former Confederate Veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee. The Klan organized into the Invisible of the South and in 1867, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, became its first Grand Wizard. Subsequently, the Klan reached its zenith of power around 1870. The United States Congress, in response to the atrocities committed by the Klan, passed the Force Act of 1870. Four enforcement acts were passed within a few years. They enabled punishments for those who interfered with African American voters, jurors, and officeholders. The acts allowed for the suspension of Habeas Corpus, thereby allowing the military to arrest suspects without charge.
These acts, mostly carried out in South Carolina, effectively dismantled the original KKK.
However, in 1915, a preacher from Alabama was inspired by the silent film Birth of a Nation. After watching the film, he led a group of 15 men with a burning cross to Stone Mountain to commemorate the beginning of the new Klan on Thanksgiving Day. He remained in charge of the new klan for eight years before being unseated by a new leader.
Sadly, the Birth of a Nation was the first film ever shown in the White House, and when adjusted for inflation, it remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time.
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Also coinciding with the emergence of the KKK, was the use of Convict Labor (later in life, Nathan Bedford Forrest had convicts working his farm) as a new form of slavery. (Click here to read more on Convict Labor camps in the South. ) To learn more about the convict lease system of Georgia, click here.
The short version of convict labor is as follows:
After the Civil War, prisoners were on loan to the highest payer for work outside of prison. Many of the North Georgia railroads and other buildings, government and private, were built by convict labor. Many counties in Georgia and other states had convict camps that were located near the county's poor houses/farms for widows, children, and the indigent.
To learn more about Pickens County's poor house, click here.
Many of the convicts were Freedmen who were incarcerated for minor crimes. In Georgia, there were felony and misdemeanor camps. Originally, many of the convict camps were chain gangs. However, in 1907, outrage at the practice of southern states' use of chain gangs promoted states to into using different terminology. While county poor houses were largely eradicated as a result of the Social Security programs started in the 30s, the practice of using Convict Labor continued into the 60s.
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All of these practices were nothing in comparison to public lynchings that happened throughout the 19th and early decades of the 20th Century. Lynchings weren't restricted to the Southern states, although they led the field in sheer numbers.
A six-year study published in 2017 by the Equal Justice Initiative found that 4,084 Black men, women, and children fell victim to "racial terror lynchings" in twelve Southern states between 1877 and 1950. Only 300 lynchings took place in other states.
During this period, Mississippi's 654 lynchings were the highest of all Southern states, and the United States at large.
Table 3.8: Black victims of lynchings per 100,000 blacks, by state, 1882-1930 (from A festival of violence : an analysis of Southern lynchings, 1882-1930 by Tolnay & Beck, 1995, pg. 38)
All of the photos of lynchings above were taken in Georgia
State No. of victims per 100,000
Mississippi 52.8
Georgia 41.8
Louisiana 43.7
Alabama 32.4
South Carolina 18.8
Florida 79.8
Tennessee 38.4
Arkansas 42.6
Kentucky 45.7
North Carolina 11.0
Several anti-lynching bills were passed by the northern states in the 1920s, however, they were all blocked from passing by a coalition of southern legislators. It wasn't until the 1930s that a bill was passed to that effect, and yet, no one was prosecuted successfully in an anti-lynching capacity until the mid-1940s.
Lynchings persisted even beyond the 1950s, with 1952 being the first year with no lynchings reported.
Since 1909, over 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced that failed to pass. However, in 2022, an anti-lynching bill, largely in response to the latest outrage over the murder of George Floyd, passed in the Senate and House of Representatives.
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Perhaps the best local example of a Sundown County was Forsyth County. In 1912, several blacks were lynched and hung in front of much of the county, with some sources claiming at least 5,000 attendees. Shortly after, night riders drove off all of Forsyth County's African Americans. This violence spilled over into Dawson, Cherokee, and other nearby counties.
To learn more about what happened in Forsyth County in 1912, click here.
In Cherokee County, the arsons of the Coggins farms on December 5th, 1915* resulted in the loss of 160 livestock and sixteen-thousand bushels of corn, hay, and numerous farm implements. Coggins employed a great number of African American workers.
In another of the seven arsons that happened that week, the livestock of Otto Springer were switched out with "plugs", less healthy and financially viable cattle, and his farm was destroyed. Oddly, four of his real cattle were found grazing on Burnt Mountain in Pickens County a few weeks later.
In Pickens County in the 1910s, Colonel Sam Tate, aware of the threat from KKK groups, armed his men and prevented them from forcing out his African American workers at Georgia Marble. Shortly after he died in 1938, many of the African American workers in neighborhoods like Smokey Hollow, Upper and Lower Whippoorwill, and Lonesome City moved away to northern areas. Without his protection they began searching for a safer place to work.
To learn more about Lonesome City, Pickens Counties ghost town, click here.
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Economic and political factors during the 1860s provided fuel for the Sundown Towns and Counties. The British began investing heavily in cotton farms in Egypt and India. As a result, the cotton market became oversaturated and the former high price of cotton was no longer attainable.
Additionally, the economy of the South was devastated by the Civil War, and prosperity among the average farmer was rare.
In 1892 and 1893, there was an outbreak of "Whitecapping" in the Mississippi counties of Amite, Franklin, and Lincoln. Secret vigilante groups formed to disrupt the merchant farmer system. When the merchants would foreclose on white farmers, they would bring in black workers to work their former lands. The Whitecaps would terrorize the blacks and force them to leave the farms. In 1893, a group of 100 men stormed the jail of Lincoln County to try and free their imprisoned vigilante friends. However, local officials with the support of Governor John Marshall Stone were able to defeat the movement. Similar raids on jails happened in Pickens (1888) and Forsyth Counties (1912) in Georgia.
The crop-lien system emerged in this environment. Under the system, merchants would loan food or supplies to farmers (mainly black) for their anticipated yield for the next harvest. In most cases, the crops wouldn't meet the debt and the farmers would owe more to the merchant in subsequent years. This cycle would create de facto indentured servants of the farmers. It also would allow the merchant to control which crops the debtor farmers would plant.
The net effect of the system favored the wealthy and the plantation owners. The system consolidated their wealth.
To the poor white farmers of Mississippi, much of their former land was controlled by the merchants and their black tenants.
Between 1902 and 1905, farmers formed vigilante groups to put the "negro in his place" and force them to work for non-merchant-owned farms. Again in the Mississippi counties of Amite, Franklin, and Lincoln - hundreds of people joined groups named the Farmers Protective Association, the Farmer's Industrial League, and the Farmer's Progressive League. The vigilantes came from the ranks of these groups.
It took several years and the support of Mississippi Governor Longino, local prosecutors, and undercover detectives from the Pinkerton Agency to end the group's reign of terror and influence in Mississippi.
It wasn't until the 1940s that the crop-lien system was no longer used. World War II had created many jobs and poor farmers moved to the larger cities to find work.
Franklin County is also the county known for the murder of two black students in 1964. Two men were hitchhiking when they were apprehended, beaten, chained to an engine block and drowned in the river. _____________________________________________________________
When I began to write about Sundown Towns and Counties, I had no idea the research would reveal how backward our nation had been in its equal treatment and protection of all of its citizens.
And yet, looking at the numbers, I'm reminded of Georgia's legacy. It took the entire United States 73 years to kill as many African Americans via lynchings as we did in one year to the Cherokee in 1838. Let that sink in for a moment.
*It should be interesting to note that the arsons of both groups not only happened within two days of each other but that December 5th coincides with the anniversary of the creation of Cherokee County in 1832 from the Cherokee Territory.