Buried Truths by Hank Klibanoff (review)

On Election Day 1948, three black farmers in the small town of Alston, Georgia, put their lives on the line to vote in the election for governor. Their lives and the lives of their families were forever changed from that day forward, with one of the farmers losing his life. The details of who committed the crime and for what purpose are not secret. Unfortunately, the details of the case were all too similar, historically, to other violent racially motivated crimes in the American South. In this season of WABE's Buried Truths podcast, host and journalist Hank Klibanoff ponders why Isaiah Nixon's killers and other men like them got away with murder in the South. He posits that by "understanding [our racist] past we can understand the [racialized] present." ¹

Buried Truthsbegins with the 1946 election for Georgia governor. It was an important election year. World War II had ended, and Black GI's returning home from service faced the reality that the country they fought for in Europe and the Pacific would not protect them from the horrors of the racist American South. Three-time Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge was running for reelection with the open threat that "Wise Negroes will stay away from white folk's ballot boxes." ²In Georgia, black citizens were prohibited by law from voting in the Democratic primary. Party officials told black voters that the general election was more important. In reality, in Georgia, where 83 percent of voters were Democratic, the primary was the most important election. One-third of the counties were black majority, a sizable voting block that was being deprived of their right to vote.

In 1946, Primus King of Columbus, Georgia, challenged the primary rule through a lawsuit. The courts ultimately ruled in King's favor. This was a great victory for black Georgians who immediately began to register to vote. In the three weeks before the 1946 primary, black registered voters jumped from 1,200 to 7,000; however, Talmadge and his supporters were not going to give up their all-white primary without a fight, announcing in all capital letters in his newspaper The Statesmanthat, "This is a white man's country and we must keep it so." ³Black voters were purged from the list of registered voters thanks to those party officials who were sympathetic to Talmadge's cause. The FBI estimated that nearly fifty thousand black voters were purged or pressured into not registering to vote. They were also openly threatened by violence. This tactic was successful as Eugene Talmadge won the primary and the general election; however, he died before he took office. As a result, a special election was ordered for September 1948 prompting Herman Talmadge, Eugene's son, to throw his hat in the ring.

In national politics, Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, was running for president in his own right and in 1947 he became the first president to address the NAACP, pledging to work towards a cure for prejudice and racism and stating that the national government should lead the way. ⁴This speech inspired the local NAACP, led by Dover Carter, and which counted John Harris and Isaiah Nixon amongst its members, to continue to register voters. In the weeks leading up to the 1948 election, the KKK openly demonstrated in the street as a means of intimidation; this did not discourage black voters who wanted to exercise their constitutional right, and they did so on September 8, 1948. Carter, Harris, and Nixon knew the risk that they were taking. Unfortunately, Nixon paid with his life.

In addition to hosting Buried Truths, Klibanoff is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project. At Emory, Klibanoff teaches a class in which his students help him to research cold cases, which serves as the basis for the podcast. The course was developed to run in tandem with...