49 pages • 1 hour read
Patrick PhillipsBlood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Lynching
A consistent tool of racial violence in the South, lynching was a horrific, murderous practice of white citizens. In Forsyth County, lynchings were a “time honored ritual” (49) and were often viewed not as a “gruesome communal murder but a case of old-fashioned frontier justice” (102). A group of white people typically carried out lynchings, and large crowds witnessed them; in addition to other mementos, it was common to have photographs made into postcards of these events.
The terror caused by frequent lynchings in Forsyth and other counties was twofold: Lynchings were, on their own, a terrible act of murder often including several forms of violence; in addition, the social climate of a place was significantly altered by a lynching, with the white community feeling emboldened and the black community feeling sad, angry, and terrified.
Phillips also describes the practice of mock lynchings, in which a white person or persons used the threat of a lynching to coerce a false confession from a witness. In a specific example in the text, a wealthy white man wrapped a rope around young Ernest Knox’s neck until the boy chose to testify. Though mock lynchings weren’t considered the same as a real lynching, Phillips points out that “there was little difference between real and ‘mock’ violence, since a ruse arranged to fool a suspect could… change… into a summary execution” (39). In other words, mock lynchings could very quickly transform into actual lynchings, especially if the victim did not comply with what they were asked to do during the mock lynching.
Racism
Racism is the force behind the white Forsyth citizens' actions that socially, institutionally, and interpersonally pervades American society. Though Phillips doesn’t spend much time defining race and racism, the idea that the white citizens of Forsyth are racist plays a consistent role in the text. Forsyth garnered a reputation over time, as “Georgia’s most racist county” (172), implying that even among a number of counties that acted viciously and inequitably to people of color, Forsyth stood alone in the intensity and scope of white people’s racially motivated actions.
Reparations
Reparations play a large role in current political conversations regarding American treatment of both indigenous and African American peoples. In Blood at the Root, reparations for the “victims of 1912” (233) are discussed at several junctures, though none are actually made. Phillips critiques this lack of action, arguing that where “anyone familiar with the crimes of 1912 might expect to find signs of reflection, apology, even truth and reconciliation, there is only a deafening silence” (243). While there are many potential modes of reparation that could be made, Phillips notes here that there is a “deafening silence” in Forsyth County through the present day.
White Supremacy
Underlying the racist actions and beliefs of the white citizens of Forsyth County is the larger system of white supremacy causing people to believe in a “‘whites only’ world” (xvi). Phillips describes the belief of white people in 1912 Forsyth that “‘racial purity’ was their inheritance and birthright” (xiii) and traces this belief all the way through the 1980s in the county. The pervasiveness of this belief and the use of force and violence to carry out this vision is the direct result of a white supremacist system, which causes white people to believe in their own (false) superiority and dominance, as well as to justify the use of “white violence” (56) in support of that system.
