Being an avid collector of old civil rights material, I’d already amassed a pile of these NAACP membership cards. I guess what drew my attention to this particular one that appeared on eBay was the date—coinciding with the passing of the 1963 Civil Rights Act. Like most who buy on that platform I tend to keep communications brief and impersonal. This time though I couldn’t help but ponder on the life of Maggie Perry Shipman from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and what her motivation was to become a card-carrying NAACP member.

“Well, Maggie was my husband’s grandmother,” the seller Nancy replied. “Apparently she was quite a lady. I think she would have joined in 1923, while the local mayor was trying to run the Blacks out of town after a policeman was killed. She’s long gone now of course. I guess we should have asked her about those days, and now it’s too late. That’s always the way it goes isn’t it?”

As we discussed a few things around provenance, Nancy elaborated on Maggie’s background. Turns out she was born in Ellaville, Schley County, Georgia, in 1903. Her grandparents were former slaves. Like so many others from southern African American communities, her family were part of the Black migration story, following the east coast trail to the industrial north in an attempt to escape persecution, seek opportunity and hope for a better way life.

Now then, Schley County—pronounced ‘Sly’, I’m told— is located in a mid- to south-western position of the Peach State in the Flint River basin. Being so rural, it’s not exactly densely populated. Even today, Schley has barely 5000 residents, with nearly half living in or around the county seat of Ellaville. It didn’t take long for Carolinian families to discover this area and settle into agricultural life and timber work. With its own micro-economy, the town grew a little. By the mid-1800s, harvesting cotton, and tending to the corn fields, peach orchards and pecan groves were the order of the day.

BIRTH OF A NATION

Less than a fifth of the Schley community are African American. A century or two ago, that ratio was flipped. Schley farmers needed a labour force to work the fields, and county schedules from 1860 indicate that the size of the enslaved population matched that of whites. No huge surprise in the Deep South of course. But the quirk of Schley County was the extent of the violence directed towards the Black community. Even for the South, and even for that era.

At the time Maggie Shipman was living out her childhood in Schley, Georgia was leader in the state lynching statistics. Three-hundred-and-one illegal executions were conducted between 1900 and 1930. Racial oppression in Schley started well before the American Civil War of course, but a few later factors exacerbated the local situation—residual bitterness among certain parts of white society during the Reconstruction Era was one. When Blacks were first permitted to vote in elections in the late 1860s, white Ellaville voters boycotted the polling station. The Klan stepped things up further, with frequent nightrider attacks on the Black community, intimidation of potential voters, the torture and fatal shooting of fourteen former slaves, and torching schools. As historian Clarence D. White notes in Georgia Community Affairs’ Reflections, the number of violent attacks in Schley County during Reconstruction were so high that the Freedmen’s Bureau reported “an extreme reign of terror existed in Schley County against the freed colored people”, disproportionate even to the violence that was already being witnessed elsewhere in Georgia.

Other influences came into play by the arrival of the twentieth century. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent movie, Birth of a Nation, was one of Hollywood’s earliest moral mistakes, stoking the fire for a Klan revival and the creation of other white supremacist groups. A global depression was also brewing that would peak in 1929 and last a decade or more. Blacks and whites who worked the land in rural Georgia were progressively disenfranchised. The Klan used the theme of economic hardship as a tool to drive a wedge between the two. The poor and poorly educated were being groomed by soap box preachings of how Black farm owners and field workers were threatening the livelihoods of white society. The Klan offered empathy and financial support (via benevolent funds) for those who chose to be part of the congregation. And of course, promises of retribution.

Low-income, poorly educated white Schley society might have been easy pickings, but obituaries of “upstanding” members of the community posted the Ellaville Sun lauded Christian and Klan affiliations in the same breath:

“…E.D. Beckwith, 44, of Atlanta, founder and president of the Beckwith Transport Line and a native Schley countian, died Tuesday at Veterans Hospital there. Funeral services were held Tuesday afternoon with the Rev. E.E. Eteele officiating. Burial was in West View cemetery. Mr. Beckwith lived at 1246 Floyd Street. He was a member of the W.D. Luckie Masonic Lodge, the Ku Klux Klan, his local Baptist Church, and a charter member of the Fellowship Sunday School Class…”

The Klan’s presence in Schley County was palpable, though the truth was that much of the violence involved groups of individuals who were not necessarily connected with the organisation. Incidents could start spontaneously, often with verbal goading that quickly escalated into violence, usually fuelled by alcohol. Other attacks were premeditated, with no immediately obvious trigger other than skin colour. There seemed to be enough hate in Schley County’s general population that Klan input was almost superfluous to requirements. Mob perpetrators were often family members, groups of friends, or farming collectives with some axe to grind.

SCHLEY LYNCHINGS

In January 1889, Charles Blackman was accused of the murder of a white man called Stonewall Tondee, the 22-year old son of the Treasurer of Schley. Evidence implicating Blackman in the murder was weak. Regardless, while waiting for trial, Ellaville residents called for a lynching. A few respected figures in the community asked for a fair trial, and Blackman was moved to Sumter County Jail to avoid a mob attack. From day one of the trial there was a clear demonstration that the courthouse full cross-section of those in attendance were seeking revenge one way or another. The evidence may have been circumstantial, but Blackman was found guilty and sentenced to hang. On the basis of the accused being unable to fully consult his counsel, the case was allowed to go to appeal three times before the Georgia Supreme Court. On the third, a guilty verdict was upheld. Before his execution Blackman continued to protest his innocence. He informed the Atlanta Constitution: “I have had no trial at all. If I had been allowed to talk, I could have told a great deal but when I saw blood in the eyes of the people of Schley County I was afraid to say anything.” Blackman went to the gallows in front of a crowd of 5000, many of whom had arrived on a train specially scheduled for the occasion. To this day Blackman’s fate is still classified as a lynching—given the fact that of cutting telegraph wires so that there could be no intervention from government officials to delay or prevent the hanging.

A few years later, Ellaville witnesses the triple lynching of Dawson Jordan, Charles Pickett and Murray Burton, killed by the same mob who also burned down a school, two churches and three Black lodges in 1911. Shootings were also common. Will Jones was a Black man in his late twenties who lived on a white family-owned farm on February 12, 1922. When Jones refused to open the door, he was shot and wounded but managed to run into the night through a back door. When he reached Ellaville a mob of farmers and soldiers on leave hunted Jones down. He was shot again, multiple times. Nine men, including members of the family who owned the land were accused of the murder. The county sherriff was accused of helping some of the men avoid the law. The motivation for his murder was never exposed, though speculation was that Jones was either about to report bootlegging operation in the area, or was protecting a fellow Black man when a white woman was “insulted” by his offer of a ride in his buggy.

HEADING NORTH

Low-income white society were almost as much of a part of the Great Migration as African Americans. As all headed north and dispersed out to industrialised cities, Schley saw a sharp drop in overall population. The frequency of recorded racially motivated mob attacks decreased dramatically after Maggie Shipman’s family had left for Johnstown, Pennsylvania. For Maggie, the irony was by the time she arrived in Johnstown in the 1920s, the whole country was in the throes of the Great Depression. That affected everyone, everywhere. And the reality was that racism was not unique to the South. At one point, Johnstown’s mayor tried to run ALL the Black people out of town.

“The Shipman’s refused to go. Instead, Maggie became a minister for the Pennsylvania NAACP, with the Johnstown chapter opening in 1961” Nancy told me. “She led a very active life about town and was loved and highly regarded by all who knew her. She was a member of Jobs Daughters. They managed numerous homes for the poor and owned the churches. Maggie loaned money, on comfortable payment terms, to neighbours who couldn’t afford to borrow from the banks. She was a huge role model—not just for my husband and her grandchildren but to her entire community.”

Maggie Shipman died peacefully on May 14, 1989, at the grand old age of 85, and by all accounts led a humble, fulfilled life.