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The Watkinsville lynching was a mass lynching that occurred in Watkinsville, Georgia, United States on June 30, 1905. The lynching, which saw a large mob seize 9 men from a local jail and kill 8 of them by gunfire, has been described as "one of the worst episodes of racial violence ever in Georgia."^[1]

History

In May 1905, a storekeeper named F. M. Holbrook and his wife were murdered in Oconee County, Georgia.^[2] In the aftermath, one white man and three African American men were arrested,^[2] with the white man accused of the murder and the three African American men accused of being accomplices to the murder.^[3] They were held in the jail in Oconee County along with 6 other individuals,^[4]^[5] all African American men held for various reasons.^[3]

According to The Oconee Enterprise, local newspapers at the time praised residents of the county for "not rushing to judgment."^[2] However, at midnight on June 29, a large mob of individuals, reportedly from nearby Morgan County, Georgia, organized and traveled to Oconee County.^[2] At 2 a.m.^[5] on June 30, 1905,^[1] this large mob of between approximately 50 and 100 people^{[note 1]} broke into the Oconee County jail.^[1] The mob, consisting of white men,^[4] went to the house of the town Marshal and compelled him to take them to the county jail, where the jailer relinquished the keys to the jail cells at gunpoint.^[3] Afterwards, they seized 9 of the 10 prisoners, including the murder suspect, and proceeded to tie them to nearby fence posts.^[4]^[5] One prisoner had apparently avoided the attention of the mob and was left in his cell.^[5] Of the 9 men seized by the mob, only one had been convicted of a crime, while the others were awaiting trial.^[5]^[3] After tying the men to the posts, they proceeded to open fire on the men, with the New-York Tribune reporting that "five volleys" were fired at the men.^[5] Eight of the men died as a result of the gunfire,^[1] while one man survived and proceeded to play dead.^[5]

Following the lynching, several of the bodies were buried in the same grave, leading a historian to say in an interview with CNN that "within an hour of Atlanta is a mass grave".^[1] One of the victims, Sandy Price, was identified by his mother,^[1] and he is the only victim with an identified grave.^[6] A photograph of the dead bodies, still tied to the fence, was taken shortly after the murders.^[2]

In 2007, the lynching attracted national attention as part of a story by CNN. Following this, a group that had worked to identify the graves of the victims in the Moore's Ford lynchings, a 1946 lynching that had occurred on the border between Oconee County and Walton County, Georgia, announced that they would work to identify the unmarked graves of the Watkinsville victims.^[1] In 2020, on the 115th anniversary of the lynching, a vigil was held in Watkinsville for the victims,^[6] with attendees organizing at the former site of the jail and marching to the grave of Sandy Price, where they paid their respects to the victims.^[4]

Notes

^ Sources vary on the number of individuals in the group. A 1905 report in The Voice of the Negro gives the number as 100,^[3] while a 2007 article in the Savannah Morning News says "at least 50 people"^[1] and a 2020 story from WUGA says "as many as 50 white men".^[4]