The Untold Story Of Black Community In America

Over the past couple years, more Americans have become familiar with the story of the Tulsa race massacre, where a white mob burned a vibrant black community to the ground, which is crazy, even crazier, dozens of other black towns have been erased off the American map, not by burning them down, but by hiding them underwater.

Lake Lanier is a lake in Forsyth County, Georgia, where people go swimming and boating and fishing and do a bunch of other Lackey things. But before it was Lake Lanier, it was a town called Oscar Ville, Georgia. Now Oscar Ville was a thriving, predominantly black community, with a church, a school and dozens of homes, until the year 1912 when a very bad thing happened. Oh, two very bad things in 1912 two black teenagers were accused of rape. They were tried, convicted and sentenced to death in a single day, and after they were executed, a mob of white men terrorized drove out or killed all the black people in the surrounding area. And they did that until the entire black community of Oscar Bill disappeared.

The county went from having over 1000 black residents in 1912 to zero in 1920 that story is so sad. It makes this story look like a comedy. After the black community had been run off, the white people of Forsyth County said, You know what, we could use a big old lake. So they made one right where the town of Oscar Ville had just been. They flooded the area and literally covered up the entire town with water. The town is still under there, the homes and churches and schools. They’re still down there, and now people go boating on top of them.

Just like the story of the Black community in Alabama, Once a thriving black community with a black college, the first black railroad, and literally hundreds of family homes. Today, it’s Lake Martin, at least they had the decency to name it after a black person.

There are over 100 drowned American towns, and many were destroyed in the name of development induced displacement. That’s when people have to leave their homes so the government can develop things like dams or parks or lakes. This happens to both white and black people, but historically, when it happens, black people were under compensated for their properties, or not compensated at all.