Cobb County’s past racial terror haunts the present

“This type of violence shown toward African Americans … has caused many to respond to what is occurring with great disbelief,” said Lisa Cupid, county chairwoman on the Board of Commissioners, in a Monday news conference referring to the period from the 1880s to the 1960s when lynching was rampant in the South. Cupid urged residents to wait for the police department to do a thorough investigation.

Police Chief Dan Ferrell acknowledged that the case elicited an emotional response from residents, but said there is no indication of foul play. He said the investigation is ongoing.

It has been 126 years since John Bailey was lynched in Marietta.

It has been 110 years since Leo Frank was lynched in Marietta.

These moments live on as trauma just under the surface. Without remembrance, understanding, healing and reconciliation, those feelings of unease and trauma will continue to rise to the surface.

“It is not odd to me for someone to immediately go to that place because it is the place that we occupy and so well know,” said Bev Jackson, a founding member of the Cobb County Remembrance Coalition.

Jackson’s parents are from Cobb County, as are her ancestors, who date back to more than 100 years in the area.

Her late cousin, who was 14 when Leo Frank was lynched, couldn’t stop thinking about what happened to Frank, the Jewish factory superintendent accused of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl.

Frank was convicted and sentenced to death. When his sentence was commuted to life in prison, a lynch mob dragged him from prison and killed him in 1915.

“She talked about it well into her old age,” Jackson said. “This is trauma.”

In 2023, Jackson, along with Amy Reed and Wes McCoy, sought to encourage dialogue about the racist past of the county and the country by partnering with the Equal Justice Initiative, the Montgomery, Alabama-based nonprofit that is committed to ending mass incarceration, challenging racial and economic injustice and protecting human rights.

To become an EJI partner, community members must commit to holding regular conversations with area residents. Jackson, Reed and McCoy organized a series of conversations with community leaders to propose their plans and hear feedback.

They organized a community bus trip to the Legacy Sites in Montgomery — the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park — followed by a moderated panel discussion. A second bus trip culminated in a small gathering in January during which the attendees discussed the impact of their journey.

“I felt emotional,” said professor Linda Lyons, but “I also felt powerful. For us to say we have been (to the Legacy Sites) twice, three times … is the only way that people will realize these painful stories.”

Some attendees shared their own stories of awakening to the evils of racism, whether it was something they experienced themselves or something they witnessed as a bystander.

As one attendee noted, the moment we are living in right now feels like another “battle for the soul of America.”

Next month, an exhibit about the racial terror killing of John Bailey will be installed at the Marietta History Center to coincide with the March 20 anniversary of Bailey’s death. The exhibit is based on research conducted by the Cobb County Remembrance Coalition.

A series of panels, a story quilt and an audio interview tell the story of March 18, 1900, when a mob of more than 100 men lynched Bailey for an alleged assault. When the mob failed to kill him by hanging, the masked men shot him. Bailey died two days later from his wounds.

Though the incident was largely forgotten by the public, in 1901, Bailey’s murder was noted in “The Blood Red Record,” a review of lynchings in the U.S. after 1893 written by news correspondent and historian John Edward Bruce.

In his writings, Bruce explores the importance of the role of law in seeking justice and the hubris of any man who takes matters into his own hands.

“We use the word murder advisedly and because the execution of any human being for any crime, by his fellow men, without the sanction of the law, no matter what his crime, is nothing short of murder, and every man who participates in the execution of any other man, either by fire or the rope, who has not been tried for his offense by a jury of his peers, according to the forms of law, is an accessory before the fact, no matter whether he is ‘a best citizen,’ or a common thug and bully.”

As early as 1901, Bruce urged Americans to understand that allowing ourselves to dispense with the rule of law has implications for everyone, not merely those who have done harm to others.

Through conversation, events and exhibits, the Cobb County Remembrance Coalition hopes to encourage the kind of healing that has proved elusive, said volunteer Mary Smith Judd.

“Candid, truthful conversations are difficult but necessary,” she said. “Healing requires justice, and justice requires trust. We cannot have either unless we recognize and alter the cyclical patterns that separate us.”

The recent death of a young man and the feelings of community members to the circumstances surrounding his death (even if those feelings are unsupported by present facts) is a reminder that we can bury the truth of our past or run from it, but without resolution, it will always come back to confront us.

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