By the mid-20th century, southwest Georgia’s Terrell County, three hours from Atlanta, gained a reputation among Black residents and civil rights workers as “Terrible Terrell” — one of the most dangerous and violent settings for people of color in the South.
Driving the news: The fourth season of the WABE podcast “Buried Truths” examines Terrell’s white power structure and the horrors that befell Black residents at its hands.
- It focuses on the brutal 1958 police beating of James Brazier, who died of brain damage days later, and the police shooting of Willie Countryman in his own backyard one month later. Both involved the same police officer Weyman B. Cherry.
- Nearly 90 students in the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory contributed to the research — a project run by Buried Truths creator and host Hank Klibanoff.
Why it matters: Revisiting cases like these is important, because while the victims never saw justice in a court, “an entirely new kind of justice that can still be achieved: the judgment of history,” Klibanoff, Pulitzer-prize winning author and former managing editor of the AJC, told Axios.
The big picture: Brazier’s death “will never officially be called a murder, just a killing,” he said. In fact, Officer Cherry was soon given a raise and eventually promoted to Sheriff, Klibanoff’s students found.
- “The retelling of it and re-investigation of it with new facts and new findings make it possible to have a clear consensus on the same issues that would have come before a jury,” Klibanoff said.
Of note: The Brazier family reported the murder to the FBI at the time. Remarkably, Hattie Bell Brazier filed federal lawsuits against the officers and the case went to trial in 1963.
- But after apparent witness intimidation highlighted by Klibanoff’s students, she lost and no one was convicted.
What they’re…
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