Mary Turner and the Lynching Rampage of 1918

Saturday, May 15, 2010

10:00 a.m. 

Webb Community Church

300 Blakely Rd

Hahira, Georgia 

Marker Text:
 

Near this site on May 19, 1918, twenty-one year old Mary Turner, eight months pregnant, was burned, mutilated, and shot to death by a local mob after publicly denouncing her husband’s lynching the previous day.  In the days immediately following the murder of a white planter by a black employee on May 16, 1918, at least eleven local African Americans including the Turners died at the hands of a lynch mob in one of the deadliest waves of vigilantism in Georgia’s history.  No charges were ever brought against known or suspected participants in these crimes.  From 1880-1930, as many as 550 people were killed in Georgia in these illegal acts of mob violence. 

Erected by the Georgia Historical Society, Lowndes/Valdosta Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Valdosta State University - Woman and Gender Studies Program, and The Mary Turner Project