Readers will carry around the stunning images of Williams’s Elegy for Mary Turner long after turning the book’s last page. Turner’s story, awful though it may be, deserves that place of remembrance in our hearts and minds. Turner died a brutal death, but she risked her life for justice. A group of men feared this powerless woman’s act of speaking out so much that they stole her dignity and her life. Every work of art created in Mary Turner’s name repudiates their actions by restoring her humanity to the world.
Postscript: A Place to Lay Their Heads
by C. Tyrone Forehand (great-grandnephew of Hayes and Mary Turner)
Hayes Turner entered the world in August 1893 in Brooks County, Georgia. He was one of ten children born to John Wheeler Turner, Sr. and Charlotte Gay. In 1918, Hayes was falsely accused of complicity in the murder of Hampton Smith, a Brooks County farmer notorious for his brutal treatment of his farm laborers. Upon hearing that he had been implicated in the death of Smith, Hayes Turner fled. It was reported he had been hidden in a foxhole by his mother, who would sneak food and clothing to him in the dead of night. Following his lynching, Hayes was castrated by those responsible for this heinous act of violence. His father and mother pleaded for the return of his body, but their pleas went unanswered.
His siblings, Joseph, Mary, John Wheeler Jr., George, Julia, Willie, Naomi, and Norman were tormented for many years by the memory of their brother’s horrific murder. Questions posed by their children and grandchildren regarding the murder of their brother would always result in an overwhelming sense of sadness, accompanied by a distant and terrifying stare, which led one to believe that they were actually witnessing this dreadful act of terror. A deafening silence would follow as tears began to flow.
Hayes wed Mary Hattie Graham, born in 1885 to Perry W. and Betty Graham. Mary was the second of five children born to her parents. The lives of her sisters and brothers, Pearlie, Perry G., Otha, and Etha were forever changed by the lynching. After speaking out against her husband’s murder, Mary took her two small children, Ocie Lee and Leaster, to members of her family for safekeeping. They were reared under assumed names.
Rufus Morrison was only ten years old when he was hiding in a cornfield along Ryalls Road in the town of Barney and witnessed Mary Turner’s execution. The memory of a frightened and bewildered woman was forever etched in his mind as he saw the mob tie a rope to her ankles and hoist her upside down from a tree. They taunted and jeered a terrified Mary as they began to roast her alive. One of the members of the mob took a swig of moonshine from a jug and spat it on her as another dared him to slit open her abdomen where her unborn child was oblivious to the fate which was about to befall it. Upon rupturing her womb, the birthing matter which provided nourishment to her unsuspecting baby spewed over three of Mary’s executioners. It was reported throughout the years that each of those whom the birthing matter touched died horrific deaths: one shouted on his deathbed, “Get that nigga baby off of me!” After crushing the head of Mary’s baby with his boot, one mob member placed his cigar in the jug of moonshine and used it to mark the ground where the life of Mary and her baby were taken. Those who witnessed this violent act of cowardice stated that the sky became dark as the mob completed its task.
There was no place of safety for Hayes, Mary, their unborn baby, or any of the other fifteen victims of the mob mentality that caused the otherwise respectable, law-abiding, Christian men and women of these Southern communities to deteriorate into a pack of roving wild animals bent on destroying the lives of anyone whose skin did not look like their own. Following their violent and brutal deaths at the hands of those who had no shame and never faced justice on this side of life, these powerless and innocent victims of unspeakable human atrocities had no grave to lay their heads.
Today, Hampton Smith, the brutal farmer whose death was the spark that lit the keg of violence in this seemingly peaceful Southern town, has an edifice which stands more than six feet to mark his place of rest in the Pauline Cemetery off of Georgia Highway 133. Descendants of those who executed Mary enjoy roads named in their ancestors’ honor, and William Folsom, who owned the property where the lives of Mary and her unborn child were so viciously taken, has a bridge that bears his name as tribute to his contributions to the town of Barney. But one is left to ask, Who cried for and honored the life of Mary, Hayes, and their baby?
For many a year, our ancestors have cried out to our spirits, pleading for their stories to be told; today we answer. On Saturday, May 16, 2009, at the Hahira Community Center, nearly ninety-one years following these unspeakable acts of terror, more than 200 people, both Black and white, joined descendants of Hayes and Mary Turner to commemorate this dark stain in our nation’s history. The ceremony was organized by those spearheading the Mary Turner Project, a group of faculty and students of Valdosta State University’s Women and Gender Studies Department as well as residents of the South Georgia community.
In an interesting twist of fate, or perhaps it was just a coincidence, on the very day of this historic and long overdue event the sky again became dark, as it was reported to have been some ninety-one years ago on that tragic day. More than 100 vehicles caravanned to the location designated by the Department of Transportation as the site for the installation of the marker approved by the Georgia Historic Society. Every oncoming vehicle stopped along the way for the approaching caravan as it moved towards the site of the historic ceremony commemorating the lives of Hayes and Mary Turner and the other victims of the mob violence perpetrated throughout Lowndes and Brooks counties. They commanded the respect in death that they never received in life as the caravan inched ever closer to a place to lay their heads.
Here is the text on the historical marker for Mary Turner erected at 4023 GA-122, Hahira, GA 31632:
Mary Turner and the Lynching Rampage of 1918
Near this location on May 20, 1918, Mary Turner, 8 months pregnant at the time, was lynched. Mary was kidnapped and brought to this place for objecting to the lynching of her husband Hayes on May 19. After being brutally killed Mary’s body was buried near here in a makeshift grave marked only by a whiskey bottle with a cigar inserted in the bottleneck. Mary and Hayes’ murders were part of a larger lynching rampage that unfolded that week in May of 1918. Other victims include Will Head, Will Thompson, Julius Jones, Eugene Rice, Chime Riley, and Simon Schuman, along with two other unidentified victims. No one was ever formally charged in any of these crimes.
(Erected by the Mary Turner Project, Lowndes/Valdosta Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Valdosta State University’s Women and Gender Studies Program.)*
* On October 8, 2020, the Mary Turner Project and the Georgia Historical Society had to remove and store the marker due to repeated vandalism. In its place a large steel cross was erected to temporarily mark the site of Mary Turner’s murder.
Elegy for Mary Turner Page 2