Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America

Though many of Forsyth’s black residents were “poor, illiterate field hands and hired men” (141), a large number managed to “thrive” (141) and were the most likely to have tried to stay in Forsyth through the violence because “they had more than anyone else to lose” (142).

Joseph Kellogg, for instance, was the “largest black property owner in the county” (142). Kellogg was born, like many black children, to parents who had only recently been freed from enslavement and were trying to build new lives through sharecropping for the man who had owned them.

Though white people continued to exploit black people, for the first time, the latter had “the right to protest the injustices whites committed against them” (144). In large part, Abraham Lincoln’s Freedmen’s Bureau enforced these rights, although many of the agents were corrupt. Eventually, a good agent, William Bryan, took over Forsyth, and began to enforce fair wages and treatment: “[I]n case after case, Bryan found in favor of black plaintiffs” (146).

Yet there were still many ways for black residents to be poorly treated. White residents continued to terrorize black people by committing acts of violence after dark. In addition, former slave owners practiced binding young black people into service—making them “prisoners…still enslaved long after emancipation” (148).