Summit Gist

Horrific Death of Mary Turner In 1918 Mary Turner, a young, married black woman and mother of two was lynched by a white mob in Lowndes County, Georgia, for protesting the lynching and murder of her husband. Mary Turner, who was eight months pregnant, was tied and hung upside down by the ankles, her clothes soaked with gasoline, and burned from her body. Her belly was slit open with a knife until her unborn child fell to the ground. Its little head was crushed by a member of the mob with his heel, and the crowd shot hundreds of bullets into Mary's body.....  Read story Racially motivated mob violence by whites against black people in the American South was commonplace between 1880 and 1930, the lives of thousands of individuals including at least 159 women, lost. When I first read about Mary Turner it sent me searching for more information. I became obsessed with the horrid details, unable to comprehend that level of cruelty. I wondered about the white men and women who stood by an...