1987 Forsyth County protests
The 1987 'Forsyth County protests' were a series of civil rights demonstrations held in Forsyth County, Georgia, in the United States. The protests consisted of two marches, held one week apart on January 17 and January 24, 1987. The marches and accompanying counterdemonstrations by white supremacists drew national attention to the county. The second march was attended by many prominent civil rights activists and politicians, including both of Georgia's U.S. senators, and attracted about 20,000 marchers, making it one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in United States history.
At the time, Forsyth County was a rural county about northeast of Atlanta that had a history of violence and discrimination against African Americans, being a sundown county that was almost entirely populated by white Americans. In light of this, in 1987, a local resident announced plans for a march to occur on the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to draw attention to the county's history and continuing problems with race. Hosea Williams, a civil rights activist and politician in Atlanta, joined the project and helped lead a group of about 75 marchers through the county on January 17. The march was disrupted by a group of about 400 white supremacists, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, who injured several marchers, including Williams. The march was eventually called off and several Klansmen were arrested.
The violence attracted national and international attention to the county. Williams and other activists organized another march for January 24 that was attended by about 20,000 people, including several famous politicians and civil rights activists, such as both of Georgia's senators and Representative John Lewis. Between 1,000 and 1,500 white supremacist counter-protesters were present, though with roughly 3,000 law enforcement officials present, there were few incidents of violence. About 64 people were arrested during the march, including white supremacists Don Black and David Duke. About two weeks after the second march, Oprah Winfrey traveled to Cumming to broadcast an episode of her talk show, interviewing several white residents. Some activists protested the show due to the producers' decisions to not have any African Americans on the show, and Williams and several others were arrested for unlawful assembly.
Following the marches, the county created a bi-racial human relations committee intended to address some of the issues raised by activists. Additionally, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued several white supremacist organizations and individuals for damages from the protests and won nearly $1 million in a federal case that resulted in the dissolution of one of the groups involved. Over the next several decades, the non-white population of Forsyth County increased, and by 2022, black people represented about 4 percent of the population, while about a quarter of the county was made up of Asian or Hispanic Americans.
Background
1912 racial conflict
is a county located in north Georgia, about northeast of the state capital of Atlanta, with its county seat being the city of Cumming. For much of the 20th century, the primarily rural county had a long history of poor race relations and a reputation as a hostile place for African Americans. In 1912, an African American man was lynched by white Americans in the county due to allegations regarding the murder and rape of a white woman there. In the aftermath of this event, some white people known as "night riders" waged a months-long terror campaign of whitecapping that resulted in the expulsion of almost all African Americans from the county. Prior to this, approximately 1,000 African Americans had been living there, with the county's total population being around 11,000.Sundown county
Following the expulsion, Forsyth developed a reputation as a sundown county, where African Americans were not allowed to be in the county after nightfall. In the 1960s, signs were posted around the county reading, "Nigger–Don't Let the Sun Set on You in Forsyth County", including one on the lawn of the county courthouse. Also during this time, as Lake Lanier developed into a popular recreational destination, African American vacationers faced discrimination and threats from locals. In 1968, ten African American boys and their camp counselors were told by local residents to leave the county or they would be forcibly removed, and in 1976 there was a cross burning after an African American man rented a slipway at a nearby marina for his boat. Black truck drivers who traveled to the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant were often escorted by members of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, while the early 1980s saw many black people shot in encounters with white people at the lake. Despite a steady growth in population through the 1970s and 1980s, the county was home to almost no African Americans, with the United States Census Bureau reporting that, of the county's 1980 population of 27,958 people, only one was black. By comparison, censuses taken in 1920 and 1960 had shown a black population of 30 and four, respectively. 1980 also saw the expansion of U.S. Route 19 in the county into a four-lane toll road, significantly decreasing the travel time between Cumming and Atlanta and causing the county to begin to develop into an exurban bedroom community for upper middle class white people who worked in Atlanta.Proposed march
By 1987, the county had a population of around 38,000, of which about 99 percent was white, leading several media publications to refer to the county during this time as "all-white". That year, Charles A. Blackburn, a white resident of Cumming, announced plans for a civil rights march to draw attention to the county's racial problems. Blackburn backed out of the idea after receiving numerous death threats. Dean and Tammy Carter, two residents of Gainesville, Georgia, revived the idea and invited Hosea Williams, a civil rights activist and member of the Atlanta City Council, proposing a "March against Fear and Intimidation" in the county on January 17. The purpose of the march was to draw attention to the history and lasting legacy of the racial events in the county, including highlighting the fact that the county was still all-white. It was scheduled to take place the weekend before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which had been established as a federal holiday only four years earlier, in 1983, and had quickly become, according to human rights activist and academic Leonard Zeskind, "a flashpoint for white supremacists".In the weeks leading up to the march, Ku Klux Klan groups and white supremacists in north Georgia began to coordinate plans to disrupt the event, which they said was being organized by "outside agitators and communist racemixers". The planned march was to occur against the backdrop of several high-profile racial incidents across the country, including an attack on three black people in Howard Beach, Queens, and a hazing incident at a military college in South Carolina wherein a black student was harassed by white students who had dressed as Klansmen. Regarding the racial climate at the time, activist and pastor Cecil Williams of the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco said, "Just when we thought we had swept the whirlwind of racism into the corners of society, now we see it is blowing back into the center of the floor". On January 17, the same day that the march in Forsyth County was scheduled, white supremacist groups had held a parade in Pulaski, Tennessee, the birthplace of the KKK, led by white supremacists Robert E. Miles and Thomas Robb.
First march
The march occurred in Cumming on Saturday, January 17, with a group of about 75 demonstrators, mostly from Atlanta. The group consisted of about two dozen local white people and several African American activists who traveled there by bus. Among those who participated were future author Patrick Phillips and his family, who were locals of the area, and state representative Billy McKinney. The march was planned to begin at Bethel View Road near an offramp of Georgia State Route 400 and go for several miles through the county until ending in Cumming. The demonstrators arrived late, and in the meantime, a group of about 400 counterdemonstrators, composed of Klansmen and individuals sympathetic to white supremacist ideology, had gathered to oppose the civil rights demonstration. Noted white supremacists J. B. Stoner, Daniel Carver, and Dave Holland, who was the grand dragon of a KKK organization, were present and gave speeches that energized the group of counterdemonstrators. During one speech, Stoner stated that allowing African Americans into Forsyth County would bring "crime and AIDS" to the area. Seeking to disrupt the march, these white supremacists gathered at the intersection of two county roads along the march's route, and some of the people carried Confederate battle flags and nooses. Klansmen constituted about ten percent of the total number of the counterdemonstrators there and were primarily members of one of two Klan organizations: The Southern White Knights and the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.In preparation for the march, about 75 local police officers and members of the Georgia State Patrol were on duty, though both the law enforcement and the demonstrators were greatly outnumbered by the counterdemonstrators, as local officials had not expected their large turnout. As the march began, the large number of counterdemonstrators overwhelmed the police cordons that they had set up along the march's path, and many began to shout racial slurs and other obscenities at the marchers. At one point, Williams led marchers in singing "We Shall Overcome" as the counterdemonstrators chanted racial expletives. The event eventually turned violent as some counterdemonstrators began throwing rocks and bottles at the marchers, resulting in several people becoming injured. Williams was one of the injured, having been hit in the head by a brick. The violence ultimately prompted the march organizers to call off the event prematurely after law enforcement officials told them that they could not guarantee their safety. Law enforcement officials arrested 8 Klansmen, and all but one were residents of Forsyth County. After the march was called off, counterdemonstrators met at the Forsyth County Courthouse and listened to more speeches given by Stoner and other Klansmen. Former pro-segregation governor of Georgia Lester Maddox was also in attendance.
Speaking of the event later, Williams stated, "In thirty years in the civil rights movement, I haven't seen racism any more sick than here today". Talking to The New York Times, Williams compared the county to South Africa under apartheid and said that children as young as ten or 12 had yelled death threats and racial slurs at the marchers. The march and accompanying violence attracted national attention, and local leaders attempted to mitigate some of the bad publicity, with the chamber of commerce putting full-page advertisements on newspapers stating that the racists' actions did not represent the people of Forsyth County. Many local residents expressed frustration over the attention the march had drawn to their county, with one Forsyth County local telling The Atlanta Constitution, "we should have busted every camera down there and kicked every reporter's ass". In the aftermath of the march, the Mead Corporation cancelled plans they had for constructing a 5,000-worker plant in the county.