Mary Turner
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Mary Turner
Back the 19th century when slavery was well in demand and considered moral to the American society so was lynching. Lynching by definition is by the killing of somebody as part of a legal or extralegal process that usually consists of brutal and outrageous murder fest. Unfortunately back then lynching was considered a punishment and usually happened to slaves and or African Americans in general. I came across a one particular lynching story that brought out a whole bunch of women fighting for the protection against lynching women, her name was Mary Turner. Mary Turner and her husband worked on a farm in Brooks County, Georgia in May of 1918. A dispute had happened between a tenant working on the farm and the owner. The ternate backfired on the owner and ended up killing him. The people that had knew the owner of this farm were enraged that a “colored” man had killed the owner of that farm and with that knowledge these people were on the prowl for the first colored worker they could find. The first person they ended up finding was a man named Hayes Turner, Mary’s husband, they brutally killed Hayes and in his defense Mary protested that she would be contacting the authorities for the tragedy they imposed on her and her family. With this news hanging over these murders heads they took upon themselves to get rid of her. A small stream, where she was found with her ankles tied together and hung from a tree head downwards, found Mary who was 8 months pregnant. Gasoline was thrown on her clothes and she was set on fire. One of the members of the mob took a knife and split her abdomen open so that the unborn child fell from her womb to the ground and the child's head was crushed under the heel of another member of the mob. A $100,000 memorial has been commissioned in Georgia, and the creek renamed Turner Creek. There is an irony in that one member of the mob had the last name Turner, too.
