Meriwether-Pike County GaArchives News.....Buggy Traces Used to Lacerate a Meriwether Negro's Bare Back .
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Valerie ( Johnson ) Freeman http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00009.html#0002248 January 27, 2008, 3:05 pm

"The Constitution" .
Atlanta, Fulton Co., Georgia

Issue of Wednesday, August 30, 1899

pg. 33

Buggy Traces Used to Lacerate a Meriwether Negro's Bare Back

Seven White Men Have Been Indicted for Kidnapping and Whitecapping Near 
Greenville
- - - 
Complainant is Badly Used
- - -
Meriwether People Take Cicero Harris from Home and Beat Hom
- - -
Injuries Keep Him from Walking
- - -
The Complainant is Carried into the Grand Jury Room on a Mattress, Where He 
Showed His Wounds
- - -

Greenville, Ga., August 29 (Special)  The grand jury today returned true bills 
against Walter Blake, Baldwin Bransford, Charley Bransford, Clarence Foster, 
Jim Chappell, T. C. Sullivan and Bill Jones, alias Elder McLair, charging them 
with kidnapping and whitecapping.

Friday night of last week Cicero Harris, colored, who lived on the plantation 
of Solicitor General Thomas A. Atkinson in the eastern portion of this county, 
was visited, it is claimed, by these whie men, who stated they had a warrant 
for Harris's arrest.  The negro claims he was taken to Pike county by the 
parties and unmercifully beaten with buggy traces and whips and in 
corroboration of his statement he this morning exhibited his back, covered with 
bleeding sores caused by the cruel last, to the grand jurors.

The negro, unable to walk, was to this city on a mattress and carried by 
stalwart men before the grand jury.  He charges that he was whipped because he 
refused to work for one of the defendants.  The event has caused a great deal 
of excitement in the section of the county where it occurred.

Solicitor General Atkinson, on whose place the negro who was beaten lived, 
declares that such crimes must stop and in his efforts to punish those guilty 
of this offense he will have the co-operation of the best people of 
Meriwether.  Several crimes of similar character have occurred recently in this 
neighborhood and the grand jurors are investigating the matter and bills of 
indictment against several for whitecapping will be the result of the 
investigation.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/meriwether/newspapers/buggytra2527gnw.txt

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