49 pages • 1 hour read
Patrick PhillipsBlood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Devil’s Own Horses”
Despite the fact that the majority of the violence in Forsyth was committed by white residents, “during the century that followed, generations of whites have continued to blame Forsyth’s recurring episodes of racial violence on ‘outsiders” (70). Further, “the further one gets from 1912, the more frequently whites have tried to deflect attention…to a specific group: the Ku Klux Klan” (70-71). Phillips notes the importance of the Ku Klux Klan’s development, and then explains that, “it is simply impossible that the black people of Forsyth were ‘run out’ by…Ku Kluxers” (72), since the Klan had not yet been created. Instead, the black people of Forsyth were driven out by “ordinary people” (73).
Phillips traces the geographic origins of Forsyth County, originally home to Cherokee people. As “white settlers pushed farther and farther west during the late eighteenth century” (73), Cherokee natives were forced to retreat; by the “early nineteenth century, the native people of Georgia were confined to an area in the north-west corner of the state” (73). Eventually, the Cherokee people were “disenfranchised in the courts” (74) and eventually completely removed from the territory. Phillips explains how this legacy of forced removal was, in part, responsible for the fact that “whenever someone first suggested that blacks in the county…[be] driven out of the county forever, the white people of Forsyth knew in their bones that such a thing was possible” (77).
Phillips also describes the history of enslavement in Forsyth County. Though, for example, one local historian wrote extensively about the individual efforts of the first farming families to “tame the county’s rugged wilderness by themselves” (77), it is important to note that there was “a sizeable minority” (78) of Forsyth residents who owned enslaved people and benefited from their labor. Before emancipation, Forsyth “was home to a total of 890 enslaved people” (78). The legacy of slavery lived on in Forsyth, transitioning from one kind of enforced violence to another. That said, Phillips also notes that the “old southern power dynamics between rich and poor whites were…altered” (82), since rich white businessmen like Charlie Harris had “an incentive to protect the black labor supply” (82). As a result, Harris “needed to stage a trial that maintained at least the outward appearance of justice” (82).
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Majesty of the Law”
After Mae Crow’s death, “murder was added to the ‘true bill’ against Ernest Knox” (83), and trials were set for him, Oscar Daniel, Jane Daniel, and Toney Howell. Two other prisoners were also held as witnesses: Ed Collins and Isaiah Pirkle. Although two decades later it was determined “unconstitutional to try African Americans in any place where they were systematically excluded from juries” (83), in 1912 it was legal to try the accused in front of an all-white jury in Cumming.
The judge, Newt Morris, specially requested that Governor Joseph Mackey Brown “impose martial law for the duration of the trials” (83), including sending troops for protection in Forsyth. Brown agreed and ordered three Georgia National Guard companies to escort the prisoners and stay with them. Another difficulty of the upcoming trial was how to find adequate legal representation for the accused. Judge Morris called “eight lawyers before the bench” (84). Of the eight, the four more prestigious and powerful lawyers were already serving the prosecution. The remaining four were “law students and overmatched small-town attorneys” (85).
Getting the prisoners from Atlanta to Cumming was no easy feat. When they disembarked from the train station “thirteen miles east of Cumming” (86), the group “numbered more than two hundred, counting 167 military escorts, the prisoners themselves, members of the press, and lawyers participating in the trial” (87). On the first day of travel, the group rested at the “outskirts of town just as the sun was going down” (88). The soldiers were on guard and protective, so when a group of “gentlemen wearing the spectacles and fine wool suits of attorneys-at-law” came to the edge of camp, it was surprising. There are no historical records of what these attorneys discussed with the six prisoners; later, though, it would come to light that “this particular judge and this particular attorney are now known to have participated in one of the most brazen acts of mob violence in American history” (88).
Though the prisoners would likely not have been hopeful to “receive justice” (89), they would have probably decided “to cooperate” (89) so that some of them might come out of the ordeal alive. By the end of that night, Jane Daniel had changed her mind and would be testifying “for the prosecution” (91).
In the morning, the trial proceedings began with jury selection. Of the 12 white men, at least two would eventually join the Sawnee Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan. The first witness of the day, Mae’s father, described a painful story of looking upon his daughter’s “bloody body” (93). Witness after witness described Mae’s “broken, defiled body” (93) in order to “stoke the same sense of horror and outrage that had led to the lynching of Rob Edwards” (93). Further testimony connected “Knox and Daniel through circumstantial evidence” (94); after, Marvin Bell testified and described the confession he had coerced from Ernest Knox, with no mention of the “mock lynching” (95).
Chapter 8 Summary: “Fastening the Noose”
After a midday recess, the trial resumed. The audience solely consisted of “‘court officers, attorneys, newspaper correspondents, talesmen summoned for jury service, witnesses…and a few prominent citizens” (98). These citizens, including the mayor, would have been hopeful for a speedy resolution, since the “harvest had come to a halt” (99), because of the absence of black residents and because of the white residents' interest in the outcome of the trial. The judge and soldiers were nervous that if the trial ended in a way that was dissatisfactory to the crowd, violence would result. Major Catron “ordered his men to have their rifles loaded and bayonets fixed” (100).
Rather than calling any of their circumstantial witnesses, the prosecution began that afternoon by calling Jane Daniel, who, apparently, had “freely chosen to testify against her brother and cousin” (101). It is more likely that Jane had agreed to an “offer she couldn’t refuse: that she might save herself and some of the other prisoners if she would…tell them exactly what they wanted to hear” (101). Jane detailed the story the public had been waiting for. After Jane’s testimony, the jury deliberated for 19 minutes and found Knox guilty for the “rape and murder of Mae Crow” (103). Jane was required to testify for a second day and Oscar Daniel was also found guilty as an accessory.
In the morning, Judge Morris sentenced both Ernest Knox and Oscar Daniel to be hanged. After this announcement, the judge began a lengthy speech about the “exemplary conduct of the fifth regiment” (105). The prisoners were escorted away by soldiers and taken back to Atlanta. On the way, at one point, Knox “glanced at the soldiers around him, then asked permission to ‘make a run for it’” (106), implying that the soldiers could then shoot him. They denied his request. In Atlanta, Knox, Daniel, and Howell were once again imprisoned, while the other three were “free to go” (107).
Chapters 6-8 Analysis
The political and economic interests of a few wealthy, white citizens take precedence over almost any other motivation as the trial began in Forsyth. Up until this point, poor and working-class white farmers competing for control of their lands and livelihoods caused much of the mob violence. However, as the trial commenced, the wealthier members of Forsyth’s white communities began to display their vested interest in getting these matters wrapped up in order to continue pursuing their existing economic ventures. It was critical to make it clear to “investors, potential clients, and government regulators that the foothills were no longer the outlaw territory of old but a quiet, profitable place in which to do business” (99). This did not mean that these wealthy men did not have a hand in the unjust deaths of Ernest Knox and Oscar Daniel, but Phillips points out how their motivations would have been different from those of the poorer white men who were seeking justice through violence. Instead, these wealthy citizens decided “that if the price of peace was sending a couple of black teenagers to the gallows after a one-day trial—well, then so be it” (99).
While the American justice system is often held up as a democratic process, Phillips makes painfully clear just how unjust this system was in 1912 Forsyth County. Every aspect of the procedures—from jury selection to legal representation to the testimony of witnesses—was designed to further exacerbate the unfairness of the eventual outcome. As Phillips makes devastatingly obvious in his depiction of the meeting between the judge, lawyer, and Jane Daniel, the question for the prisoners would not have been whether they would die, but whether it was possible that some of them might not die. Thus, Jane Daniels’ choice to testify, as painful as it might seem, makes more sense—it would have been the responsible decision to make since it would potentially save the most lives. These imprisoned black teenagers and young adults were faced with the eventuality of their deaths at the hand of an unfair, racist justice system that was being manipulated against them at every turn. It is important to the overall narrative of the text that the justice system was not operating in a just way: Forsyth’s history is not just tainted by the spontaneous actions of unruly, poor white farmers; Forsyth’s history is equally tainted by the deliberate, politically motivated actions of educated, wealthy, white men.
