The last time I visited my grandparents’ hometown, I was researching an article about lynching. In 1918, a white mob tore through Valdosta, Georgia, and the neighboring county and murdered at least 11 Black people, including Mary Turner, who was eight months pregnant and found suspended by her ankles and disemboweled. My cousin is a history buff and offered to show me around. Crossing town in his pickup truck, we drove down a leafy street where, according to local lore, the mob went door-to-door looking for a Black man accused of killing his white employer and allegedly shot residents who failed to disclose his whereabouts. The goal of my story was to investigate a personal connection. One of the lynch mob’s victims, Eugene Rice, shared my family’s name and was hanged less than 20 minutes from where my maternal grandmother grew up. “You see that house over there?” my cousin asked, pointing next door. “The lady who lives there, they say her great-uncle was in on it.”
Continue reading New York Magazine here, courtesy of Zak Cheney-Rice.