What is it that intrigued you about Forsyth and fueled your years-long research? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by Patrick Phillips, author of Blood at the Root, on Quora.
I was intrigued by Forsyth because it was my childhood home, and because the place had always been shrouded in mystery. From the time I was seven years old I had heard the myth of how all the black residents of Forsyth were "run out." This story was always told in vague and legendary terms, and so I never knew anything more than the sketchiest details. As a result, the African-American community that once lived in my home county felt like a kind of Atlantis: a lost civilization that seemed to have vanished without a trace.
So I guess what fueled my years of research was the excitement of learning things that I had been told were unknowable. I had never seen a picture of a single black resident of Forsyth, but in the course of writing Blood at the Root I amassed a collection of them. I had never known where those black families lived, but now I can plot the lot numbers on a map, and look down on them from space, via Google maps. I had always been told that the KKK carried out the acts of terrorism that drove African Americans out of Forsyth, and yet when I started digging in the archives I learned that there was no KKK in 1912, and it wouldn't be reformed until 1915. This means that, as I learned in one woman's handwritten account, "the ordinary people of the county" were the ones who drove out their own neighbors.
That's all just to say that my research was fueled by basic curiosity. As I pieced together a portrait of the black community "run out" of my home county more than a hundred years ago, I felt I had finally discovered that lost Atlantis I'd imagined so many times as a kid. It was thrilling to finally meet--at least in the archives--these strong, determined, and resilient people who also once called Forsyth County home. As a white man raised in Forsyth, I felt that telling their story was the very least I could do. Coming to know their living descendants (some of whom I interviewed while writing the book) has been one of the great joys of my life.
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