Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America - Softcover

Patrick Phillips

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393354733 ISBN 13: 9780393354737

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017

Synopsis

"[H]umanizes its subjects and brims with detail... graphic, unflinching, important." The New York Times

In 1912, a young girl's murder rocked the rural community of Forsyth County, Georgia, and led a mob of whites to lynch a black man on the town square. A month later, thousands cheered the hanging, on spurious evidence, of two black teenagers then set fire to the homes and churches of farmers, field hands and servants. Bands of night-riders declared Forsyth "whites-only" and sent 1,100 citizens running for their lives. Whites took over their livestock, harvested their crops and laid claim to "abandoned" black land, slowly erasing all evidence of their communal crime.

Blood at the Root spans the Cherokee removals of the 1830s, the hope and promise of Reconstruction and the crushing injustice of Forsyth's racial cleansing. The story continues to the verge of our own era, including a violent attack on civil rights activists in 1987 as residents fought to "Keep Forsyth White" well into the 1990s. Patrick Phillips uncovers a history of racial terrorism that continues to shape America in the twenty-first century.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Phillips is an award-winning poet, translator, and professor. A Guggenheim and NEA Fellow, his poetry collection, Elegy for a Broken Machine, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Phillips lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Drew University.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393354733
• ISBN 13: 9780393354737
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336