[ Terror reigns in Georgia (in 1868). The First Great Depression
(1873). First-ever Vietnam War protest (1963). The Redcoats are
coming! (1768). A worthless piece of paper (1823). Nuke fallout treaty
(1963). Deadly troop train (1918)]
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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, SEPT. 19–25  
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_ Terror reigns in Georgia (in 1868). The First Great Depression
(1873). First-ever Vietnam War protest (1963). The Redcoats are
coming! (1768). A worthless piece of paper (1823). Nuke fallout treaty
(1963). Deadly troop train (1918) _

Thomas Nast cartoon about the racist Georgia coup of 1868,

 

Racist reign of terror in Georgia
_September 19, 1868 (155 years ago). _All the Black citizens of
Camilla, Georgia, are terrorized, and between seven and fifteen are
murdered by whites in an outburst of racist violence like many others
during the nearly four-year period between the end of the Civil War
and the election of President Grant. Slavery might have been formally
abolished throughout the South in April 1865, but, in many if not most
parts of the South, racists had remained free to use extreme violence
without restraint against the newly emancipated Black population. The
Camilla Massacre is a case in point.
The death toll in Camilla, like most information about the massacre,
remains shrouded in mystery that was imposed by the victorious whites.
 
Before the Massacre took place, Georgia had ratified a new
constitution and been readmitted to the Union. In April 1868,
Georgia's citizens, Black and white, had elected a state government
with a white Republican governor (who was strongly in favor of equal
economic opportunity and political rights for all), a
Republican-majority Senate, with three Black Republican Senators, and
an Assembly almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats,
with the Democrats holding a 3-seat majority. Of the 84 Assembly
Republicans, 29 were Black. When the legislature met on September 3,
1868, it voted to expel all its Black members on the totally specious
ground they were not eligible to hold office. Georgia Republicans,
many of them Black, were outraged and held huge rallies throughout the
state, denouncing the racist coup.
One of those protest rallies was planned to take place on September 19
in the courthouse square of Camilla, a county seat. When the
protesters began to assemble, Camilla's white sheriff ordered them to
leave town. When they asserted their right to protest, the sheriff and
a mob calling itself a "citizens committee" opened fire on them,
killing and wounding many. How many was known only to the racists, who
kept the number a secret.
What followed was a was a reign of terror. All over the state, whites
beat Black citizens with impunity and warned them to refrain from
voting in the upcoming Presidential election, if they valued their
lives. The terrorists succeeded; before the wave of terrorism,
Georgia's electorate had chosen a Republican Governor and 32 Black
Republican legislators. In the November 3 Presidential vote following
the racist rampage, hardly any Blacks dared to cast ballots, with the
result that Grant's racist opponent won Georgia's electoral votes by a
wide margin. [link removed]

The illustration, by Thomas Nast, was published after the Georgia
legislature expelled all of its Black members, but before the Camilla
Massacre.
  
The First Great Depression Begins
_September 20, 1873 (150 years ago)._ Two days after one of the
largest U.S. banks closes its doors in a vain attempt to avoid
bankruptcy, the New York Stock Exchange shuts down in order to prevent
the complete collapse of the stock market. The Panic of 1873 marks the
beginning of what will be called the Great Depression, the longest and
deepest economic downturn the U.S. will ever experience until it is
eclipsed in 1929. Millions of workers will soon lose their jobs, and
many of them will never have a decent job again.
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War Resisters' League Organizes the First U.S. Vietnam War Protest
_September 21, 1963 (60 years ago).__ _One month after the South
Vietnamese government's deadly nighttime attacks on Buddhist temples
throughout a country where the majority of the population is Buddhist
(see This Week in People's History for 8/21/1963 at
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and one day after a high-ranking South Vietnamese official told the
media that "Buddhist priests don't exist in Vietnam. Actually, they
are saboteurs or naive people directed by the Communists toward
burning themselves," the first demonstration against U.S. support for
the Vietnam War is organized by the War Resisters' League outside the
U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan.
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The Redcoats are coming!
_September 22, 1768 (255 years ago__).__ _Less than six years before
the start of the Revolutionary War, the citizens of the Massachusetts
colony learn that England is about to send a large contingent of
troops to enforce the law in the face of widespread, sometimes
violent, anti-British activity. Delegates from 96 Massachusetts towns
come together in Boston's Faneuil Hall for a week-long meeting to
discuss a response to the troops imminent arrival. 
During what is known as the Massachusetts Convention of Towns, a
militant faction, led by Samuel Adams and John Hancock, which favors
armed resistance, is outvoted by a majority that favors peaceful
protest.
When the troopships arrived in October, it was clear that their
commanders were expecting violent opposition, which never
materialized. After the troops disembarked in full battle array, they
encountered no resistance while they marched to Faneuil Hall, which
they took over. As anticlimactic as the landing was, it helped to
solidify an understanding among the colonists that peaceful protest
was never going to resolve the contradiction between North Americans
and the British Crown.
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Promises, promises
_September 23, 1823 (200 years ago)._ The Treaty of Moultrie Creek is
signed by the representatives of Native Americans in northern Florida
and the U.S. Government. Under the treaty, which is the product of an
effort to eliminate sometimes violent conflicts between Native
Americans and white settlers, four million acres in north-cental
Florida is declared to be a reservation under the exclusive control of
Native Americans and off-limits to whites. 
The U.S. Government started the break the treaty before the ink was
dry, but it remained in force for more than six years until the U.S.
Congress passed, and President Andrew Jackson signed, the Indian
Removal Act, which made it illegal for Native Americans to live east
of the Mississippi River, without any regard for the terms of the
Treaty of Moultrie Creek and scores of similar solemn obligations of
the U.S. Government.
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Putting an End to Nuke Fallout
_September 24, 1963 (60 years ago). _The U.S. Senate ratifies the
treaty that bans all testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere,
under water, or in outer space by a vote of 80 to 14. The Soviet Union
ratified it the next day and it went into force on October 10. The
treaty is the culmination of a worldwide 18-year grassroots campaign
to permanently outlaw atmospheric nuke tests and thereby prevent
further increases in the large and growing quantity of radiactive
material in the air, water, and ground that has been created by
fallout from atmospheric testing.
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Pandemic Turns Troop Train Deadly
_September 25, 1918 (105 years ago).__ _As part of the military
build-up for World War I, a troop train departs Rockford, Illinois,
carrying 3108 apparently healthy draftees to an Army base in Georgia.
While en route, a wave of the highly contagious (and misnamed)
"Spanish flu" sweeps through the recruits. When the train reaches its
destination, more than 700 of the men aboard are so sick they are
taken directly to the base hospital.
At this very moment, the United States is just beginning to experience
a public health crisis that will kill at least 700,000 people in the
U.S. and some 21 million around the world. The rapidly spreading
infection is being reported in the news, but not as a major story,
because no one is yet aware of how bad it is going to get. The
pandemic had yet to make the front pages as it would within weeks. 
The wave of a deadly infection among so many young, otherwise healthy,
young men on the troop train  would certainly have been the top
story, which might have helped alert the population to the developing
crisis, but it was not reported at all, because the U.S. Army treated
it as a military secret.
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* U.S. history
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* Ku Klux Klan
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* Vietnam antiwar movement
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* Native Americans
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* Pandemic of 1918
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