Lynching in Forsyth County / Lynching in America - Cumming, GA - Georgia Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

LYNCHING IN FORSYTH COUNTY
On September 10, 1912, a 24-year-old Black man named Rob Edwards was lynched and hung in downtown Cumming, Georgia. During this era, deep racial hostility burdened Black people with presumptions of guilt, often resulting in accusations that were unfounded and unreliable. Mr. Edwards was one of several Black men arrested on suspicion of involvement in the fatal assault of a young white woman named Mae Crow. At least 2,000 white residents of Forsyth County formed a mob and stormed the jail. They found Mr. Edwards in his cell, brutally beat him with a crowbar, and shot him repeatedly. The mob then dragged Mr. Edwards through the streets to the town square, where they hung his mutilated body and left it on display. Subsequently, two Black teenagers who were also arrested for Mae Crow’s assault, Ernest Knox and Oscar Daniels, were convicted by all-white juries after trials that lasted one day each. They were hanged before thousands of white spectators. Mr. Edwards’s lynching and the mob violence that followed terrorized the remaining 1,098 Black residents of Forsyth County, who fled the county in fear. The loss of Black-owned property in order to flee arbitrary mob violence was common during this era, and Forsyth’s Black residents left behind their homes and farms to escape, taking with them only what they could carry. Forsyth County would remain essentially all white until the 1990s. No one was ever held accountable for Mr. Edwards’s lynching or the mass exodus of Black residents that followed. Like all victims of racial terror lynchings, Rob Edwards died without due process of law.

LYNCHING IN AMERICA
Thousands of Black people were the victims of racial terror lynchings in the United States between 1877 and 1950. After the Civil War, violent resistance to the equal rights for African Americans and an ideology of white supremacy led to fatal violence against Black people accused of violating social customs, engaging in interracial relationships, or committing alleged crimes, even when there was no evidence tying the accused to the offense. It was not uncommon for large white mobs to terrorize members of the Black community at random in the wake of a racial dispute during this period. Lynchings became the most notorious and public form of racial terrorism designed to maintain the racial hierarchy. The forced displacement of Forsyth County's Black community following the public spectacle lynching of Mr. Edwards was one such example, intending to instill fear in the Black community and sending broader messages of racial hierarchy and Black subordination to the entire community. This marker acknowledges the injustices of racial terrorism and recognizes that Forsyth County's commitment to racial healing starts with acknowledgement of its past. While many names of the lynching victims were not recorded and remain unknown, this marker is in remembrance of Rob Edwards, the Black families of Forsyth County, and the more than 590 victims of racial terror lynchings documented in the state of Georgia.

Type of Marker: Other Date: 2020 Sponsor: Equal Justice Initiative, Community Remembrance Project of Forsyth County Marker #: Not listed

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