The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 13

gfr Atlanta gonmal AND CONSTITUTION 13 SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 1987 Forsyth are descendants of blacks forced from the county. In some cases, she1, has not been able to document that the families ever owned land. Lucy Caslin of Decatur, the daughter of a black man who fled Forsyth County, thinks the idea of compensating such families is faintly humorous, although she wouldn't mind receiving some money for the land her father left behind. "This is 1987," she said, "and things have changed tremendously. I don't have any hard feelings towards anyone about it, because they didn't know any better.

I don't think they would do it now. "It's history," she said. returns in Forsyth went from 42 to 10. The dozens of entries for blacks paying poll taxes or taxes on household goods vanished in a year. By 1920, the separate digest listing for "colored" had disappeared from the tax book.

In Dawson County, just to the north, the situation was similar, although Dawson never had as many black residents. Many black landowners in Forsyth sold their land within months of the Crow case. Most sold for what seem to be current market prices. A number, however, held onto their land. Deed records through World War I and into the 1920s are peppered with land sales by blacks.

Joe Kellogg, who was 73 and the father of nine in 1912, sold his 200 acres in 1914 to a Fulton County man for $2,400, a considerable sum for the time. The property of Charlie Graham, another black man, remained on the county tax digest until 1947, when his son, Thomas, sold it In 1966, Thomas and his brother drove to the courthouse in Cumming to fill out affidavits on the land so the title would be clear. In the months since the civil rights marches, several people have contacted Mrs. Parrish saying they wife all my granny's children. She said they met out in the middle of the road and hugged each other and cried.

But everyone was scared for them not to go. They were afraid of the nightriders." But the bitterness of the Crow case was engraved on the county's consciousness and would remain so for nearly eight decades. For years, until someone recently removed it, a frayed hank of rope marked the courthouse docket book entry for the Crow trial. No one is sure where the rope came from' or where it went Between 1912 and 1913, the number of blacks filing property tax remained. "My granddaddy was run out," black woman told Mrs.

Parrish. The woman's aunt told her "the men came around at night, shooting into the house and burning things. They had to sleep in the woods." "The way they got to Hall County," she said, "was Mr. Brown, a white man, hid them in the back of his wagon and piled stuff over them and drove them." There were other, similar scenes. "When they ran the blacks out, my granny said that her best friend was black," a Forsyth County woman told Mrs.

Parrish. "She was a neighbor woman who helped mid Visual. JLL Want a speedboat? How about a new car? Whatever you've been wishing for, a loancan help. offers a loan for every need. Check into Ready Equity, which lets you borrow against the equity in your home.

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Members FDIC. FROM 1A Recent research shows that some blacks remained through the troubles and that others may have been protected by white neighbors or employers. Documents exist showing that black people were born, married, taxed and buried in Forsyth throughout the decades when most feared to set foot there. Last year, county officials sold automobile license plates to 15 black people. The biracial committee formed in the wake of the January civil rights marches has been considering the question of reparations for descendants of blacks forced to abandon property in the county.

But there is evidence in county records that many black landowners who left Forsyth were later able to sell their property, sometimes after a lapse of several decades and sometimes at a profit. Not only is there no evidence that black-owned property was seized by county officials, there are indications in the records that the county didn't even try to collect taxes on some of the land before it was eventually sold. "Forsyth County has never been without black people," says Donna Parrish, a genealogist who has spent a considerable amount of time poring over county and state records since February. L.B. Strickland, for example, was a member of a large black family that had settled in the Big Creek district of southern Forsyth.

The Stricklands owned land where family members continued to live through the violence of the early 1900s. Strickland himself died in 1969 and is buried in the county, Mrs. Parrish says. In the years before 1912, Forsyth's black population was concentrated around the county seat of Cumming and in the Big Creek district to the south. It was a land of hardscrabble farming for corn and cotton on holdings of 40 acres a quarter mile square.

Most of the farms were worth $200 to $600 for tax purposes. Houses were small, worn and bare. Plows were pulled by mules. While tracing deed records, Mrs. Parrish found evidence that by 1910, Cumming's black community had concentrated on the south side of town near the two black churches one Methodist and the other Baptist.

She also believes that the racial tensions evident across Georgia at that time were setting the stage for violence in Forsyth." Mrs. Parrish It erupted in one week of September 1912. On either Wednesday or Thursday night of that week in the Big Creek district, a white woman named Ellen Grice said she awoke to find a black man sitting on her bed. She screamed and he fled out the window. The alleged culprit, Toney Howell, was tracked down on Friday and thrown in jail.

On Saturday morning, according to newspaper accounts, a black minister named Grant Smith was overheard on the town square discussing Mrs. Grice's virtue in uncomplimentary terms. A crowd wielding buggy whips beat the minister within an inch of his life. When news of the beating reached a group of black people at a church barbecue, grumbling spread. News accounts said someone threatened to dynamite the town in retaliation.

A few drifted toward the courthouse. County officials, knowing they sat on a powder keg, called the governor, who sent the state militia to cool things down. Howell and Smith, together with three blacks who had been jailed on other charges, were spirited away to Marietta. Howell, though he was charged with assault with intent to rape, was never tried or punished, a curious sidelight to the events that followed. A grand jury the following February quietly dropped his case.

On Sunday night, according to reports, Slutie Mae Crow, a 19-vear-old white girl, was walking home when she was accosted by a young black man, Ernest Knox, who dragged her into the bushes. When she fought, he knocked her senseless with a rock and then left her. Happening upon some friends later, he led them back to the scene and by torchlight the girl was raped. No one then or since questioned the facts or brutality of the crime. The sister of Oscar Daniel, one of the two men charged and later hanged, even testified against him as an eyewitness.

But between the rape and that execution, Cumming exploded. On the night of Sept. 10, a mob broke down the jail doors and killed one black man who was a suspect in the case, leaving his body hanging from a light pole. The state militia was used to protect the other prisoners, guard the courthouse during the trial and hold back the crowds at the execution. By that time, many blacks had already packed up and left the county.

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