Author reading and talk with Patrick Phillips

Book reading and talk with autor Patrick Phillips. Looking forward to this POSOC & L.I.V.E.- sponsored author reading and book talk! Have you read a little ‘Blood at the Root’ yet? Here’s a snippet of the intro. Tell me if this history isn’t tapping us on the shoulders now.
“That was the night bands of white men set out on horseback, riding toward the little clusters of cabins that dotted the woodlands and pastures along the river. Using posted notices, scrawled letters, rifles, torches, and sticks of dynamite, they delivered a message to their black neighbors—including many they had known and worked with all their lives. The black people of Forsyth could either load up and get across the county line before the next sundown, or stay and die like Rob Edwards.
By the end of October, the night riders had forced out all but a handful of the 1,098 members of the African American community—who left in their wake abandoned homes and schools, stores and livestock, and harvest-ready crops standing in the fields. Overnight, their churches stood empty, the rooms where they used to sing “River of Jordan” and “Go Down Moses” now suddenly, eerily quiet.
The purge was so successful that within weeks there was no one left for the mobs to terrorize, and whites who had either taken part in the raids or simply stood aside as they passed now settled back into the rhythms of farm life…
Generation after generation, Forsyth County remained “all white,”…But now and again throughout the century, whenever someone intentionally or unwittingly violated the racial ban, white men could be counted on to rise up like they always had and drive the intruders away. Years might pass between such episodes, but each time it happened, Georgians were reminded that while the racial cleansing of 1912 seemed like ancient history, in truth, it had never really ended. In truth, many in Forsyth believed that “racial purity” was their inheritance and birthright. And like their fathers’ fathers’ fathers, they saw even a single black face as a threat to their entire way of life.”