The Government Did Nothing to Halt the Ethnic Cleansing of Forsyth County
The resentment of many white Forsyth County residents against Oscarville’s black members simmered for years, before it erupted in widespread mayhem. On September 5th, 1912, a white woman reported that she had been assaulted by two black men. Two black men were duly arrested shortly thereafter. When a black preacher suggested that she might have had a consensual relationship with one of them, a white mob attacked and beat him. The sheriff put him in jail to protect him from angry whites eager to lynch him. A few days later, the corpse of a teenage white girl was found in the woods near Oscarville. Several black men were named as suspects, and one of them reportedly confessed and implicated others. He was transferred to Atlanta for his own safety. That did not stop a white mob from descending on the local jail, where another black man was held.
A lynch mob broke into the jail, and beat the black prisoner to death. Thousands of whites then began to attack the county’s black residents. Black victims were beaten up, bullets were fired into their residences, their homes and barns were torched or dynamited, and their livestock were killed. They were threatened with worse, if they did not leave Forsyth County. The government did nothing to halt the campaign of terror. Within weeks, 98% of the county’s black population, including all of Oscarville’s residents, had fled. They were never able to return. Some managed to sell their land for pennies on the dollar, but many others simply had their farms seized by whites. Decades later, when the US government created Lake Lanier, its waters covered what had once been the thriving black community of Oscarville. Few of its expelled residents or their heirs were ever compensated for their property.
