I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction

by Kidada E. Williams

people. Anderson Ferrell had two weapons but determined it was not wise to use them with so many men crowded into his home. Mitchell Reed, who was twenty-two years old, was “sort of expecting” the Jackson County, Georgia, vigilantes to come for him, because “he had heard they put out threats,” but he took no preparations to defend himself, which made it easy for them to get the better of him when they struck and whipped him in April 1871.76 Men like Robin Westbrook and Alfred Richardson had to face attackers on their own. But some communities rallied to defend themselves collectively. In 1871, George Fleimster organized a group of men in Morgan County, Georgia, with what he said was “all the arms we could get” to guard the jail and protect another Black man who was accused of sexual assault. The Black men stood sentry over the jail until white merchants refused to supply them the gunpowder and shot they needed to defend the accused man and themselves from any whites coming to the jail to lynch him. “They would not let us have the first bit in the world,” George said. During the standoff, George, who was twenty-seven years old, informed the mayor “they were sure to kill that man … They did not put him back in jail for anything else but to kill him.” The mayor told George not to worry, and that the Black men needed to withdraw from the jail. But George countered, “Somebody ought to do it; it is your business to have somebody guard it; you are the mayor of the town.”77 The au...