... now wants to be a model of love
Spearheaded by a group of pastors, a scholarship for descendants of a racial cleansing in Forsyth County in 1912 aims to right a multigenerational wrong.
Teenagers Oscar Daniel, seated, second from left, and Ernest Knox, seated, far right, were hanged in Forsyth County, Ga., as part of a dayslong campaign to expel all Black people from the area in September 1912.Kenan Research Center at Atlanta History Center
CUMMING, Ga. — When Durwood Snead moved to Forsyth County, Georgia, in 1989, he was struck by the lack of diversity in the region, just 30 miles north of Atlanta. “It was a pretty much completely white county,” said Snead, who is white and was a pastor at the time.
According to the 1990 census, of the 44,083 people who lived in Forsyth County, 43,573 were white (close to 99%) and just 14 were Black. It was a place, Snead said, where generations of families typically lived their entire lives. It was also a place with a deep and complex history of racial violence.
In 1912, a small population of Black residents, dozens of whom were land and business owners, were violently expelled from the county, their livelihoods stripped from them. Three Black men were lynched and the remaining Black residents were ordered to leave and told never to return.
