On Embracing Discomfort on the Road Ahead

Mary Turner was angry. After Hampton Smith, the white farmer who exploited the Georgia court system to help him dole out the specific cruelties of slavery and chain gangs, was shot to death, a lynch mob of white men rose up.

Mary’s husband, Hayes Turner, who worked for Smith, was among those who were lynched. A September 1918 Crisis account offers more detail: “Mrs. Turner made the remark that the killing of her husband on Saturday was unjust and that if she knew the names of the persons who were in the mob that lynched her husband, she would have warrants…