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The Burning of Shady Grove Baptist Church- August 15, 1962. [1]
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Date: 2023-08-15
On August 14 1962, a Black church in Leesburg Georgia burned to the ground. The following day- exactly 61 years ago today- a group of Black leaders of the Civil Rights Movement arrived to see the smoldering remains of what had been the Shady Grove Baptist Church. Among them was Dr Martin Luther King jr, who wrote a column for the September newsletter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was titled "The Terrible Cost of the Ballot", and read in part,
"Tears welled up in my heart and my eyes not long ago as I surveyed the shambles of what had been the Shady Grove Baptist Church of Leesburg, Georgia. I had been awakened shortly after daybreak by my executive assistant, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, who informed me that an SNCC staffer had just called and reported that the church where their organization had been holding voting clinics and registration classes had been destroyed by fire and/or dynamite."
The Student Non violent Coordinating Committee was working to increase Black participation in the electoral process. Which was their absolute legal right...and which in southwest Georgia at the time, in Dr King's words, was tantamount to inviting death. Shady Grove Baptist was the first of several Black churches to burn in the autumn of 1962. All of them were meeting places for civil rights activists.
The local authorities claimed the destruction of Shady Grove Baptist Church was due to faulty electrical wiring.
An investigation by the FBI found otherwise. And in October of that year arrested two White men- domestic terrorists, although the term wasn't in use yet- and charged Jack Smith and Douglas Parker with arson. According to newspapers back then, the formal charge was that of conspiring against the rights of citizens.
On September 9, 1962, Mount Olive Baptist Church was burned. Local law enforcement liked to show up there during meetings, making notes of who attended, standing in the back of the church scowling, and walking slowly up and down the aisles while fondling their sidearms. Local sheriff Zeke Matthews was interviewed by a reporter for the New York Times, and quoted as saying, "We want our colored people to go on living like they have for the last hundred years."
I wasn't even a year old when these things happened. It blows my mind that they happened in my own lifetime. Worse yet is knowing that it still happens.
Today also happens to be National Lemon Meringue Pie Day. But this is more important.
Thank you for reading. This is an open thread, all topics are welcome.
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