Compensation Asked for 1912 Acts in Forsyth County

ATLANTA —  A civil rights activist who led 25,000 marchers through predominantly white Forsyth County last week said Monday that more protests will follow unless local officials compensate the heirs of blacks driven off their land by vigilantes 75 years ago.

A team of attorneys already has requested tax and property records from the county to locate blacks who may have lost land, said Randel Osburn, program director at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The Rev. Hosea Williams, in an interview, called for a grand jury investigation into a white vigilante movement that drove about 1,000 blacks out of the county in 1912.

Williams, an Atlanta city councilman, also demanded that a biracial committee be formed to “see that all black people who lost land and other personal possessions be identified and (the land) returned to their proper heirs, or be compensated properly based on today’s values.”

Williams said the committee should “ensure blacks fair and equal housing opportunity” and “equitable participation in every entity of government.”

Gov. Joe Frank Harris told a meeting of Georgia mayors in Atlanta earlier Monday that the bad publicity from the violence of the first march on Jan. 17 “stretches beyond the borders of their county, and I am deeply concerned about the negative message about our state that was broadcast around the world.”

Forsyth County, which has 38,000 residents, has been virtually all-white since 1912, when three black men were accused of raping and murdering a white woman. White vigilantes drove about 1,000 blacks out of the county after breaking into a jail to kill one black suspect. The two other black men were tried and executed.