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The Dark History of Lake Lanier – Rooted in Racial Violence
Did you know that Lake Lanier in Georgia is not a “lake” at all, but a man-made reservoir? And did you know that its history is steeped in racial violence?
Racial violence is never a pretty part of history, but it is important history that deserves to be remembered.
You may recall the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 that was sparked by accusations from a young white woman named Sarah Page, who briefly shared an elevator with a young Black man named Dick Rowland. Something happened on the elevator (no one knows for sure) and she screamed in response. The community response was a mass mob of white men with weapons and large tools came prepared to attack the Black people in the community – not just the accused young man.
Unfortunately, the Tulsa Race Massacre was not the first instance, or the last.
In 1912, Oscarville Georgia was a bustling town with growing segregation strain. A young white woman named Ellen Grice reported that a Black man had assaulted her. Days later, a white teenage girl named Mae Crow was found unconscious in the woods. The local police gathered several suspects, and violent mobs came out in response, anxious to witness public lynchings.
But since this was not a movement for justice, the violence did not stop once the convicted suspects were hanged. Race-based terrorism continued in Oscarville for several years, leading over a thousand Black residents to leave the area in search of safety. An estimated two hundred and fifty people remained, along with around a dozen businesses.
Oscarville Taken by Eminent Domain
It was then that the Army Corps of Engineers came in and took the land by eminent domain in 1956, buying some of the land from the remaining residents. Many of these residents had lived on family land for generations, and leaving it meant losing access to generational wealth of the farming land. Once everyone was out, the Army Corps of Engineers relocated most of the corpses into new cemeteries, ripped out trees, tore down the tallest buildings, built a dam, and flooded the whole area. Filling the reservoir took five years. And then they named it after a Confederate soldier. The result is a lake with a town at the bottom, like Atlantis.
Since 1994, an estimated over six hundred people have died in the reservoir, leading many to believe it is haunted.
