What’s the other side of this “terribly one-sided” event???

In Georgia there were 381 lynching incidents between 1882 and 1930, with a total of 458 victims, of whom 435, or 95%, were black. Thus, during this period on average one black person was lynched in Georgia every 40 days. The only Southern state with more lynchings during this period was Mississippi, with 538 victims (of whom 509, or 95%, were black).

If lynchings were not infrequent in Georgia, they were rare in Clarke county. The burning of John Lee Eberhart in 1921 is the only recorded lynching in Athens since lynching statistics began, and it is unlikely there have been any unrecorded lynchings here since 1882. The Eberhart case is therefore not only the last lynching in Athens; it may have been the only lynching in Athens.

This murder is terrible, and only partly because of the pain suffered by the victim, but mostly because of the 3000+ people who participated. In my opinion, the guilt is not split among all 3000 but magnified times 3000!

All three thousand people had to live for years knowing what they did. Knowing they deserved punishment. And if they were Christians, knowing that their own ineluctable punishment would one day surely come as they stood naked and ashamed before almighty God.

John Lee Eberhardt had a right to the fury of the wrongfully accused. His friends and family had a right to feel that fury, that outrage, and all of them, the victim, the friends, and the family had a right to justice, justice that didn’t seem to come in this world. All these things I accept.

What I don’t accept is blame. I neither accept any blame for this crime in Athens nor do I feel the tiniest shred of guilt. At the age of 46 years old, I was born after segregation, and after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If the purpose of retelling this shameful moment of history is only about teaching history then fine. I accept that. But it seems as though all through public schooling and later college all this history teaching was terribly one-sided. And I just have to ask…why do you suppose that is? Can’t we all just move along?