Forsyth County
A timeline of violence and healing
Below is a timeline of the impact of racial violence in Forsyth County, Georgia beginning with the expulsion of black residents in 1912. The timeline traces the incidences of violence, their outcomes, and responses during the 1912-2021 period. This timeline also includes community efforts of descendants and residents of Forsyth County to continue pushing for change and healing.
Displacement and Resistance
Introduction
The 1912 expulsion of Black residents of Forsyth County is a defining event in the history of Georgia. During this event, multiple men were killed for the assault and murder of Mae Crow, a white woman, and afterward every Black resident of Forsyth was violently forced out. Though state investigations taking place in the 1980’s were launched into what happened in Forsyth County, none of the reparations being called for were given. Governor Harris also decided to close down any further investigations, denying healing and help to the people affected by the expulsion. However, we also want to make sure that the other parts of Forsyth’s history are acknowledged to give a fuller picture of the county. There have been experiences of both strife and community since the 1912 tragedy. For a more in-depth look at the expulsion, we recommend listening to the 1912 podcast by the Atlanta History Center or reading other AHC material on 1912. Our narrative will focus on two lesser-known stories in Forsyth’s history that showcase displacement, violence, community organizing, and the ongoing effort to heal.
The marches
By 1987, Forsyth County had become less of the rural, isolated farming town of the past due to tourism from Lake Lanier. With an influx of tourists coming into the county to enjoy recreational activities there, some liked it enough to move there permanently. This meant that there were outsiders with different perspectives on issues like segregation and racism moving in and butting heads with long-time residents. Not all residents whose families were involved in the 1912 expulsion were proud of it, and not all residents wanted Forsyth to stay an all-white county. Still, there were some loud, persistent residents of Forsyth who wanted everything to stay the same, and this caused a flare-up of violence when Chuck Blackburn tried to organize a Martin Luther King Day march in 1987.
Chuck Blackburn ran a karate school in Forsyth. He saw MLK Day as an opportunity to strengthen the fraught relationship between Black and white people in Forsyth, and so he organized a Brotherhood March for that day, advertising it in the local newspaper. Unfortunately, this led to his karate school getting bombarded with phone calls threatening Mr. Blackburn and his business, telling him to stop what he was doing or else. This understandably frightened him, and he called off the march. Then Dean Carter, a friend of Mr. Blackburn’s, picked up the effort and got civil rights leader Hosea Williams involved. Together, they gathered 75 people to march with them on January 17th, 1987.
The plan was to march to the Cumming Courthouse, where Rob Edwards had been lynched in 1912. The sheer number of white supremacist counter-protestors made that an impossibility. A portion of them were KKK members wearing their white robes, but many of the counter-protestors were simply people from the area that did not welcome Carter and Williams’s message. They greatly outnumbered the Brotherhood marchers, and some of them instigated violence. Bottles and rocks were thrown, and the mob of counter-protestors got so unruly that police stepped in to escort the Brotherhood marchers out of harm’s way.
While Forsyth’s reputation as a town with a history of racial violence was known by local residents, the violence and hatred towards the Brotherhood marchers made national headlines, putting a spotlight on the county and its history. This meant that when another civil rights march was organized on January 24th, 1987, an estimate of 20,000 people showed up to march along Highway 9 to the Cumming Courthouse. This decisive action by civil rights leaders and activists all across the country to not back down set in motion the largest civil rights march since the 1960’s. Thousands of like-minded people deciding to demand change is still cause for hope, decades later. Conversations around racial injustice were sparked on a national level through media coverage from news and the Oprah Winfrey show, just getting off the ground.
Afterwards, smaller marches set up by white supremacists continued in Forsyth, but they were the main event. In March of 1987, and on January 26th, 1988, white supremacists marched to the Cumming Courthouse in a distorted mirror-image of previous marches for justice. Thankfully, no more violence was committed, and they did not stir up the same hateful chaos as in January of 1987, but their ability to march at all shows that the work is not over yet.
Lake lanier
The waters of Lake Lanier hide a painful history. Many people believe the lake was built to drown the Black town of Oscarville, but the true story tells us even more about how people deal with racism and loss. Oscarville was a small, multi-race community in Forsyth County. It wasn’t destroyed to make the lake, but it was violently emptied in 1912 when nearly all Black residents were forced out after a white mob attacked them. Families were threatened, homes were burned, and many were killed or jailed. By the time the government built the Buford Dam in the 1950s, Black people were already gone. The land was taken or sold under pressure, and the lake covered what was left.
Over time, stories of ghosts and drowned towns grew. They became a way for people to make sense of a painful history that was never fully faced. Oscarville became a symbol, part of a larger myth about Black towns lost to water, even though the truth is more painful. These stories can help people feel the past, but they can also hide the real facts: that Oscarville was erased by racist violence, not just water. Even so, the memory survives in family stories, community work, and efforts to protect cemeteries that tell the truth. Oscarville wasn’t drowned, but it was buried in silence. If we look closely, the lake reflects not just a pretty view, but a history that still needs healing. The real haunting isn’t from ghosts; it’s from the people who were pushed out, and the truth we’re still learning to face.
Forsyth in the present day
In recent years especially, Forsyth has come together as a community to reckon with the past and try to create a better future. While there has been little to no acknowledgement by government officials of wrongs committed against the Black residents of Forsyth, residents, descendants of people forced out of the county, and others have taken on the challenge of what to do next. Local churches have organized a scholarship for descendants of those expelled from Forsyth to be able to attend college. A local organization, the Forsyth County Remembrance Project, has partnered with the national organization Equal Justice Initiative to memorialize Rob Edwards outside the Cumming Courthouse, bringing awareness and some measure of healing.