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A review by ridgewaygirl
Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips
4.0
This book took me weeks to read. It's not an overly long book, the author writes well, and the story is a fascinating one, but Forsyth county is just a hundred miles from my home and a quick two hour drive away. It could just as easily have happened here.
Forsyth county lies just outside of Atlanta, Georgia and Patrick Phillips moved there with his family in the 1980s, when the county still didn't allow non-white people to live, or even pass through there. In 1987, his family went to march with Civil Rights campaigners seeking to integrate the county, but when the busloads of peaceful marchers were turned back by crowds of Forsyth county residents, Phillips and his family had to have the police escort them home. Then Phillips left for university and his hometown became just a colorful topic of conversation.
Years later, he has written a book about how in 1912, after one woman is discovered in bed with a black man and another is discovered murdered in the woods, angry mobs drove all African Americans from the county. And they and their descendants kept Forsyth county free of anyone not seen as white until the 1990s. Phillips is rigorous in his research and the story he tells is shocking and difficult to read about, but is tremendously important -- it's essential reading given how recently the county was integrated and how the attitudes still exist today.
Forsyth county lies just outside of Atlanta, Georgia and Patrick Phillips moved there with his family in the 1980s, when the county still didn't allow non-white people to live, or even pass through there. In 1987, his family went to march with Civil Rights campaigners seeking to integrate the county, but when the busloads of peaceful marchers were turned back by crowds of Forsyth county residents, Phillips and his family had to have the police escort them home. Then Phillips left for university and his hometown became just a colorful topic of conversation.
Years later, he has written a book about how in 1912, after one woman is discovered in bed with a black man and another is discovered murdered in the woods, angry mobs drove all African Americans from the county. And they and their descendants kept Forsyth county free of anyone not seen as white until the 1990s. Phillips is rigorous in his research and the story he tells is shocking and difficult to read about, but is tremendously important -- it's essential reading given how recently the county was integrated and how the attitudes still exist today.