The barbaric killing of Ahmaud Arbery was a continuation of a long, ugly history in this country, and Georgia in particular. Between 1882 and 1968, there were 4,743 lynchings—public executions without a trial—in the U.S., according to the NAACP, 531 of these murders were in Georgia, second only to Mississippi’s 581. Especially in southern states like Georgia, most of the lynching victims were Black. A small indication of the horrors in Georgia:

Glynn County, February 21, 1891: A mob of 150 “masked men” seized Wesley Lewis and Henry Jackson, two Black men convicted of killing a white man. They were being taken to prison when, according to a report in the New York Times headlined “Negro Murderers Lynched”: “The Negros were seized, bound together, and carried up the road ... After being secured to a ... tree they were given three minutes to pray. Then the wagon upon which they were standing was driven away, and the prisoners were left dangling in the air. The bodies were afterward riddled with bullets.” No one from the mob was arrested and charged for the murders of Lewis and Jackson.

Brooks County, May 19, 1918: Mary Turner, a young Black woman who was eight months pregnant, was lynched by a white mob. Mary had publicly spoken out against the lynching of her husband the day before—and his death was but one of at least 13 Black people lynched around Brooks County and the city of Valdosta by rampaging whites in about two weeks. The mob hung Mary Turner upside down, soaked her in gasoline, and burned her. She was still alive when her abdomen was cut open with a butcher knife and the fetus was torn from her body. One member of the frenzied racist pack crushed the fetus’s head with his foot. Then, the mob riddled her body with hundreds of bullets. No one was ever charged in Mary Turner’s murder.

Atlanta, September 12, 1936: At 3:00 a.m., five white men, two of them in police uniforms, banged on the door of the home of Thomas Finch, a Black man. The five took Finch away – they thought he had been involved in the rape of a white woman. An hour later, Thomas Finch’s dying body was dumped outside Grady Hospital, where he worked as an orderly. He had been severely beaten, and shot several times. There was never an investigation into Finch’s death, nor was anyone charged for it. “And it was clear why ... The horrific killing was orchestrated by one of the men on Finch’s doorstep—Samuel Roper, a police officer who went on to lead the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and then, upon retirement, Georgia’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Walton County, July 24, 1946: Roger Malcom, a Black man, was arrested after he fought with a white man in Walton County. Several days later, he was bailed out by another white man, who invited Roger’s wife Dorothy, her brother George, and Mae Murray to accompany him to the town of Monroe, where they would get Roger Malcom. After picking up Roger, he drove them down a winding dirt road. Soon a mob stopped them and “ripped the two men out of the car, roped them together and dragged them toward ... the river. One woman in the car started calling out the attackers by name ... the mob descended on the two women, ripped them from the back seat and tied them to a tree next to their husbands. The bodies of George, Mae, Roger, and Dorothy were found disfigured beyond recognition. Bullets fired at point-blank range filled the victims’ faces and arms.” “Despite abundant evidence, eyewitness accounts and two investigations by the FBI there has never been a single indictment.”