Camilla, Georgia Sept. 19, 1868 – Georgia has just reentered the Union after ratifying the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and fulfilling the obligations the Confederacy had agreed to in surrender. So federal troops were being withdrawn, and the number of Freedman’s Bureaus was being reduced. While Republicans held the governor's office and most state legislative seats, many Blacks felt insecure, with reason.
Georgia had several districts with Blacks as elected representatives however, as the state and nation marched forward to the November elections there was some secret and in other cases violent actions to make sure no Blacks and few to no Republics would be in the legislature.
Throughout the year after the federal troops withdrew the Ku Klux Klan began a campaign of terror. There were at least 13 documented Murders of Blacks before September, and the Freeman’s Bureau had documented 336 violent acts against Freemen.
this terror was to help set the tone for the legislature's move against the elected Blacks in early September. On September 3rd the lower house of representatives voted to expel 30 Republicans that were Negro or Mulatto. They did this under the absurd measure that while the new state constitution allowed Blacks to vote it did not allow them to hold office. On September 12 the state senate followed suite with the three members of their body. The Governor Rufus Bullock tried to prevent at least the senate expulsions but faced some threats from northern Georgia and backed off.
The expelled members did not accept it quietly and soon filed suit. In Camilla and Mitchell County this was all cheered on, while there were Blacks living there, they generally kept out of the way, especially since an April when they were forced out of town and away from the polls for the new state constitution. White farmers used threats of beatings and rifles to chase the Blacks out of town.
The sense of possible violence seems persistent but two White Republicans, Congressional candidate W.P. Pierce and elector candidate Jon Murphy decided to have a band march from Albany 25 miles south to Camilla and rally for the two candidates and the Republicans and Freedmen of the two counties. Historically this just seems like a bad idea, and it unfortunately proved to be.
In Camilla the news of this march, advertised even by flyers, many White men of Mitchell County just kind of showed up in town. It was a Saturday in a farming community, so it wasn’t unusual to have more people in town, but the fact they were armed was. The march started off with a band and 30 or so freedmen, some who brought rifles. Major O.H. Howard of the Freedman’s Bureau brought the news that a company in Albany had bought five cases of Henry Repeating Rifles and presented them to the Young Men’s Democratic Club.
As they marched more rumors of how there were armed men waiting in Camilla continued to come to the marchers, but Murphy, Pierce and their friend F.F. Putney continued to tell everyone that these were just rumors coming from White men to scare them. As they marched, they collected more folks from the plantations and farms, some of whom had shotguns because they had been hunting. In Camilla there were rumors that the Blacks were armed and advancing on the town.
Mitchell County Sheriff Mumford Poore quickly formed a committee in Camilla to meet the marchers and ask them to stop short of town, that things were to tense. Murphy said that it was absurd and that they were just going to hold a peacefully rally on the courthouse lawn. Poore rode back into town and reported that he couldn’t stop them and to be prepared.
So, the marchers entered town, and they started across the courthouse square when White men hidden in doorways and at other businesses opened fire. Nine people fell instantly, and 30 others were wounded. As people broke and ran, they were followed and some shot trying to escape. Sheriff Poore and volunteers continued to search for the Black members of the rally marchers for next two days.
The propaganda machine immediately shot into action with telegrams to the regional papers and elected leaders to get ahead of the truth. For the most part the White Power apparatus was able to stay ahead of the real story. The Whites of Camilla first sent out a story of how a drunk named James Jones challenged the marchers and fired at the band so the whole group fired on him as he ran and, in the process, fired on unarmed whites wounding over 30.
This is the story that was put into the record unfortunately. Allow O.H. Howard of the Freedman’s Bureau made an immediate and extensively notational report to Governor Rufus Bullock, the legislature and the Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau Oliver Otis Howard and Georgia Freedman’s state assistant Caleb Sibley. His report was validated by another agent William Mills.
Despite this Judge David A. Vason, a highly respected jurist from Albany had spent time taking statements from Sheriff Porre and others in his posse and business leaders in Camilla. These statements all stated that the “negroes were looking to make trouble.”
While Georgia fell back under Reconstruction Law because of the legislature violating the Constitution and expelling Blacks who had been legally elected, nothing was done to those who had made the Camilla Massacre possible. The Freedmen's Bureau also continued to be shuttered. Brigadier General George Meade took over Georgia as part of the Third Military District administrating Reconstruction until 1872. He did the bare minimum and did not listen to Governor Bullock when he requested aid to deal with the Klan.
The elections of 1868 were disrupted by the threats of violence by the Klan and by the story of the Camilla Massacre. The massacre story was soon buried by history and as Jim Crow steadily took over as Reconstruction ended it became something of the norm. For the next 75 years murder and the threat of murder kept Blacks significantly in 2nd class status regardless of the Civil War Amendments.
Sources:
The Camilla Massacre of 1868: Racial Violence as Political Propaganda by Lee W. Formwalt, The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Fall, 1987
The Reconstruction of Georgia by Alan Conway, University of Minnesota Press, 1966
Civil Unrest in Camilla, Georgia, 1868: Reconstruction, Republicanism, and Race, Digital Library of Georgia
The New York Times September 23 & 26. 1868
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