GAINESVILLE – Gainesville City Councilwoman Barbara Brooks used her opportunity during the Council Announcements portion of the city council meeting agenda Tuesday evening to invite everyone to meet and hear from Forsyth County native and National Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips on the first Saturday in August.
“I’d like for you to save the date, August 5th,” Brooks told the audience. “Dr. Patrick Phillips will be in Gainesville…to discuss his book Blood at the Roots.”
“I am a member of the Gainesville-Hall County Black History Society and in 2015 Patrick Phillips contacted the organization because…he would like to meet some of the descendants of the families who were displaced from Forsyth County,” Brooks said.
Phillips, who was raised in Forsyth County during the 1970s and 1980s, was doing research for Blood at the Roots: A Racial Cleansing in America. The 302-page book would be published in 2016 by W.W.Norton & Company.
Brooks said that her organization was able to accommodate Phillips’ request and introduce him to Gainesville residents whose families lived in Forsyth County nearly one hundred years ago.
According to a release from the Gainesville-Hall County Black History Society, Forsyth County was home to a very large African American community at the turn of the twentieth century.
That release goes on to describe what happened next:
“But then in September of 1912, three young black men were accused of the rape and murder of a white girl. One man was dragged form the jail and lynched on the town square. Two teenagers were hung after a one-day trial. Soon bands of white 'night-riders' launched a coordinated campaign of arson and terror, driving all 1,098 black citizens out of the county.”
It would be nearly eighty years before blacks moved back into Forsyth County according to the release.
“Our first black mayor, (John) Morrow, he and his family was one of the families expelled from Forsyth County,” Brooks said.
“The historical content,” Brooks added as she touted the book and the book signing, “we won’t get that in history books, we will not get it. That’s why I’m encouraging all of the families to get this book and get a history lesson we would not otherwise get."
Brooks’ fellow council member, Ruth Bruner, heartily endorsed the tome, saying: “I have read the book. It’s a great book…and Patrick Phillips went to Lakeview Academy.”
The book signing, reception and discussion will take place Saturday, August 5th, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church on Brenau Avenue in Gainesville.
There is no cost to attend and the public is invited.
