Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips Page A

ready, and before the mob could organize a second siege of the county jail, he had Reid and his deputies “slip [the prisoners] out of the jail and [make] a run . . . in automobiles for Atlanta.”
    HAVING SAFELY DELIVERED Jane, Oscar, and Ed Collins to the Fulton Tower and added them to a group of prisoners that now included eleven black residents of Forsyth, Bill Reid took time Wednesday morning to speak with Atlanta reporters. Under the headline “Graphic Story of Terror Reign,” the Georgian gave Reid center stage, introducing him to readers as “the picturesque sheriff of Forsyth county” who came to Atlanta with a carload of black prisoners and tales of a mob run wild in the Georgia foothills. Squinting down at a crowd of reporters with their pencils poised, Reid quickly warmed to his role: as the mustachioed, six-shooter-carrying country lawman fighting a “race war” on the north Georgia frontier. “The people of Cumming have been sleeping with one eye open,” Reid began.
The fall of night has brought fear and dread to the town and surrounding county, for there [is] no telling what might happen—it’s the dread of treachery, the torch, and the knife stab in the back. We could easily handle any emergency in the day time. The white people are armed and would promptly crush any uprising on the part of the blacks. Excitement has been high, and an uneasy feeling pervade[s] the community.
    Given that raids on black churches and homes were already driving many families across the county line, Reid’s account of the situation in Forsyth now seems not just distorted but downright delusional. He describes a white population in terror of an impending “uprising on the part of the blacks” and fearful that they might wake to “the knife stab in the back”—when in truth the only real “uprising” was being carried out by white vigilantes and arsonists. Yet even as black families stood guard over their homes, listening for the sound of approaching hoofbeats or the ominous snap of a twig, whites were the ones in a state of constant paranoia, unable to shake their deepest, oldest fear: that the sins of their forefathers would finally be avenged by the children and grandchildren of slaves.
    When reporters turned to the subject of Rob Edwards’s lynching, Reid hit his stride as a star in the tabloid drama. On the day of the lynching, the sheriff had gone to great lengths to extricate himself from the thorny problem of opposing a mob that included many of his own relatives, friends, and political supporters. But once he got to Atlanta, he didn’t miss an opportunity to recast himself as the hero who had tried in vain to save Rob Edwards.
    “I was at my home when the mob began to form,” Reid said, “and feeling against the negro burst forth in all its fury.” Though newspaper reports all agreed that it was Lummus who was left to “lock the doors of the jail and put the heavy bars in place,” Reid now claimed it was he who had bravely tried to thwart the lynchers:
I realized it was too late to attempt to get [Edwards] out of the jail and spirit him away. There was but one thing to do—I hid the jail keys. I did this as I knew that even though I should be overpowered, the mob would still be handicapped.
    At a single stroke, Reid’s revision of the story solved two problems. He erased the genuine bravery with which Deputy Lummus had stood his ground, and claimed that it was actually he, Forsyth’s crafty old sheriff, who had slowed the rioters. Such quick thinking had not ultimately saved Rob Edwards, Reid implied, but that was not because he hadn’t done his darnedest. “A few minutes” after he hid the keys to the jail, he told reporters,
a crowd of fully 100 men called at my home and demanded the keys. I told them they could not get the keys and begged them not to attempt violence . . . then at a signal the crowd went [back] to the jail. There was no jailer on duty there, as I have to look after the jail