I spent some time in trying to find the facts about the shooting of the
five colored men at Palmetto a few days before Cranford was killed. But
no one seemed to be able to tell who accused the men, and as they were
not given a trial, there was no way to get at any of the facts. It seems
that one or two barns or houses had been burned, and it was reported
that the Negroes were setting fire to the buildings. Nine colored men
were arrested on suspicion. They were not men of bad character, but
quite the reverse. They were intelligent, hard-working men, and all
declared they could easily prove their innocence. They were taken to a
warehouse to be kept until their trial next day. That night, about 12
o’clock, an armed mob marched to the place and fired three volleys into
the line of chained prisoners. They then went away thinking all were
dead. All the prisoners were shot. Of these five died. Nothing was done
about the killing of these men, but their families were afterward
ordered to leave the place, and all have left. Five widows and seventeen
fatherless children, all driven from home, constitute one result of the
lynching. I saw no one who thought much about the matter. The Negroes
were dead, and while they did not know whether they were guilty or not,
it was plain that nothing could be done about it. And so the matter
ended. With these facts I made my way home, thoroughly convinced that a
Negro’s life is a very cheap thing in Georgia.
LOUIS P. LE VIN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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