Father and son Alonzo and James D. Green were innocent African-Americans lynched near Round Oak and Wayside, Jones County, Georgia in retaliation for the murder of popular white farmer Silas Hardin Turner on July 4, 1915. A third man, William Bostick was also lynched on this day.[1] None of those killed received a trial.
Alonzo Green worked as an axeman in a local sawmill. He had married Cora in 1902 and had two children James D. (b. abt 1901) and Annie M. (b. abt 1903). White farmer Silas Hardin Turner was a prominent planter in Jones County, Georgia and the son of John D. Turner (1851-1930) and Mattie Hardin (1865-1946).
Lynching
Silas Turner was reportedly attempting to collect a debt from someone in the house of W. H. King when he was allegedly murdered by a Black man on the morning of Sunday, July 4, 1915.[2] A White mob, some 500 men strong, quickly formed and rounded up the local black population. While the Tampa Tribune reported that local Sheriff Etheridge and his deputies hunted for the murderers of Turner.[3] The mob killed father and son Alonzo and James D. Green. To prevent word of the lynching from reaching the outside world the lines of communication were cut. [4] Sheriff Etheridge was quoted as saying that Alonzo and James Green had nothing to do with the murder of Turner. [4] After the lynching Sheriff Etheridge brought in three suspects for Turner's murder Will Gordon, Scott Farr and Squire Thomas. [2]
Alonzo’s wife was eight-months pregnant with their daughter.[5]
Aftermath
In the Jim Crow Era a documented around 675 people lost their lives to lynchings in Georgia.[5] A few of these are listed below:
1 black Masonic lodges and 3 black churches burned down
Four years after the Green family lynchings these race riots were one of several incidents of civil unrest that began in the so-called American Red Summer of 1919. Terrorist attacks on black communities and white oppression in over three dozen cities and counties. In most cases, white mobs attacked African American neighborhoods. In some cases, black community groups resisted the attacks, especially in Chicago and Washington DC. Most deaths occurred in rural areas during events like the Elaine Race Riot in Arkansas, where an estimated 100 to 240 black people and 5 white people were killed. Also in 1919 were the Chicago Race Riot and Washington D.C. race riot which killed 38 and 39 people respectively. Both had many more non-fatal injuries and extensive property damage reaching into the millions of dollars.[6]
National memorial
Memorial Corridor, National Memorial for Peace and Justice
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26, 2018, in a setting of 6 acres (2.4ha). Featured among other things, is a sculpture by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo of a mother with a chain around her neck and an infant in her arms. On a hill overlooking the sculpture is the Memorial Corridor which displays 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing the counties in the United States where a documented lynching took place and, for each county, the names of those lynched. For Jones County, Georgia, Alonzo and James Green, William Bostick (July 4, 1915), and John Gilham (September 3, 1918) are memorialized as lynching victims.[1] Even though the members of the Green family stayed in the region the community did not talk about the lynching until recently when they reached out to the National Memorial for help in memorializing the lynching. [5]
In the broader context of racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as:
The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30 – October 2, 1919, at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas where African Americans were organizing against peonage and abuses in tenant farming. As many as several hundred African Americans and five white men were killed. Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred". Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident, stated "... twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred". More recent estimates in the 21st century of the number of black people killed during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, and have ranged into the hundreds. The white mobs were aided by federal troops and local terrorist organizations. Gov. Brough led a contingent of 583 US soldiers from Camp Pike, with a 12-gun machine gun battalion.
Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence.
Roy Belton was a 19-year-old white man arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a female accomplice for the August 21, 1920 hijacking and shooting of a white man, local taxi driver Homer Nida. He was taken from the county jail by a group of armed men, after a confrontation with the sheriff, and taken to an isolated area where he was lynched.
On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt which resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among those killed were Hazel "Hayes" Turner and his wife, Mary Turner. Hayes was killed on May 18, and the next day, his pregnant wife Mary was strung up by her feet, doused with gasoline and oil then set on fire. Mary's unborn child was cut from her abdomen and stomped to death. Her body was then repeatedly shot. No one was ever convicted of her lynching.
The Knoxville riot of 1919 was a race riot that took place in the American city of Knoxville, Tennessee, on August 30–31, 1919. The riot began when a lynch mob stormed the county jail in search of Maurice Mays, a biracial man who had been accused of murdering a white woman. Unable to find Mays, the rioters looted the jail and fought a pitched gun battle with the residents of a predominantly black neighborhood. The Tennessee National Guard, which at one point fired two machine guns indiscriminately into this neighborhood, eventually dispersed the rioters. Headlines in the immediate aftermath stated five people were killed, while the Washington Times reported "Scores dead." Other newspapers placed the death toll at just two, though eyewitness accounts suggest it was much higher.
Jim McMillan was lynched in Bibb County, Alabama on June 18, 1919.
Round Oak is an unincorporated community in Jones County, Georgia, United States. The community is located on Georgia State Route 11, 8.4 miles (13.5 km) north-northwest of Gray.
Wayside, Georgia is an unincorporated community in Jones County, Georgia. It is included in zip code 31032.
Berry Washington was a 72-year-old black man who was lynched in Milan, Georgia, in 1919. He was in jail after killing a white man who was attacking two young girls. He was taken from jail and lynched by a mob.
The Jenkins County riot of 1919 took place on Sunday, April 13, 1919, a black man killed two white police officers in an altercation during a traffic stop. In response, a white mob burned several buildings in the black community and killed four black men.
The Dublin, Georgia riot of 1919 were a series of violent racial riots between white and black residents of Dublin, Georgia.
The Darby 1919 lynching attempt was the attempted lynching of Samuel Gorman in Darby, Pennsylvania on July 23, 1919. Samuel Gorman, a 17-year-old black boy was sent to jail for the alleged murder of William E. Taylor.
The Laurens County, Georgia race riot was an attack on the black community by white mobs in August 1919. In the Haynes' report, as summarized in the New York Times, it is called the Ocmulgee, Georgia race riot.
Miles Phifer and Robert Crosky were lynched in Montgomery, Alabama, for allegedly assaulting a white woman.
Paul Jones was lynched on November 2, 1919, after being accused of attacking a fifty-year-old white woman in Macon, Georgia.
Chilton Jennings was lynched on July 24, 1919, after being accused of attacking a white woman, Mrs. Virgie Haggard in Gilmer, Texas.
On September 18, 1921, 16-year-old Eugene Daniel was lynched for walking into a white girl's bedroom.
An 18-year-old African American named William Turner was lynched on November 18, 1921, in Helena, Arkansas, for an alleged assault on a 15-year-old white girl. Two years earlier hundreds of African-Americans were killed during the Elaine Race Riot in Hoop Spur, a nearby community also in Phillips County, Arkansas.
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