In the summer of 1919, a black man named Eli Cooper was lynched in Georgia for allegedly making statements that offended the white community. His words, seen as a threat to the racial hierarchy of the time, ultimately led to his brutal murder and the destruction of black churches in the area.
Eli Cooper was described as a community leader, selected by a white mob for that very reason. On the night of Wednesday, August 27, he was forcibly removed from his home in Cadwell, Georgia, by a group of fifteen to twenty white men. They took him to a church several miles away in Early County, where he was lynched. After his murder, his body was thrown into the church, which the mob set on fire.
By the morning of Friday, August 29, the violence had escalated further. Three black churches and a community building were burned down in Ocmulgee, Georgia, where Cooper had been killed.
Cooper’s lynching was sparked by allegations that he had been speaking in a manner that was offensive to white people. According to local reports, Cooper had been making statements about the oppression of black people, claiming that “negroes had been run over for fifty years” and suggesting that this treatment would soon come to an end. These remarks, were interpreted as a call for an uprising or violent revolution, by some white people, leading to fear that ultimately resulted in his murder.
Following Cooper’s murder, four white men—C.G. Rogers (Coroner of Dodge County), C.C. Adwell, John Quillian, and Will Watson—were arrested in connection with the lynching. Despite the evidence and the horrific nature of the crime, all four men were quickly acquitted, which was not unusual for the time, as white mobs often faced no legal repercussions for lynching African Americans.
The lynching of Eli Cooper was part of a larger pattern of racial violence during the early 20th century. The summer of 1919 became infamous as “Red Summer,” a period marked by widespread racial violence and race riots across the United States, including in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Arkansas. During this time, fears of black empowerment and resistance to Jim Crow laws fueled lynchings, attacks on black communities, and destruction of property.
