ATLANTA: Resurfacing a Shared History of Displacement Among Native and Black People
This goes without saying, but possible spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen Atlanta, Season 3, Episode 1, stop reading and start watching. It’s more relevant if you take 36 minutes, put down your phone, and take in this eerie history lesson and stand-alone horror episode.
The entire first episode of this season was chaotic, in the most wonderful of ways. In 36 minutes, Atlanta touched on:
- The cultural differences between European-Americans' and Black-Americans' differing use of the washcloth.
- Present-day Black face.
- Fried Chicken — you’re supposed to season AND fry it, otherwise it. is. not. fried. chicken.
Most noticeably, this episode pays tribute to Devonte Hart and his five siblings, who were brutally and tragically murdered by their adoptive, white, mothers. If you’re unfamiliar with his story, I implore you to take a moment and learn about what he and his siblings endured.
And while Atlanta draws attention to the all too familiar and horrifying fates of white violence against Black children, the episode also alludes to the shared trauma of Native and Black peoples, who were, at separate times, violently displaced from the lands that would eventually become Lake Lanier in Georgia.
Atlanta opens with two forty-something-year-old men on a boat late at night. The two, one Black and one white, are fishing on what we presume to be Lake Lanier in GA, which is not far from Atlanta. The Black man recounts a haunting tale from a childhood experience at the lake, where he nearly drowned while swimming, and recalls feeling like someone was forcefully dragging him under.
The white man responds that Lake Lanier is in fact haunted, telling him about Oscarville, the town that once was, but was drowned when the area was flooded to make the lake. The white man continues, telling the Black man:
“But the thing about being white is…it blinds you. It’s easy to see the Black man is cursed because you’ve separated yourself from him. But you don’t know you’re enslaved just like him. Cold whiteness. Hypothermic. You lose logic. You see the blood. And you think someone else is bleeding. Everyone is screaming at you to turn the machine off. But you can’t hear ’em. You can’t even hear yourself. See, we’re cursed too.”
This is deeper than the flooding of one mostly white inhabited town. Oscarville has a long and storied history, and while alluded to in Atlanta, it’s actually much darker and much deeper, than presented in the show.
Lake Lanier is a massive manmade lake in Forsyth County, GA. But long before the United States Army Corps of Engineers flooded the area to create the Buford Dam, and long before it was known as Oscarville, it had been home to the Cherokee nation, who stewarded the land for several generations. However, the federal government forcibly removed the Cherokee in 1838 to accommodate white settlers. Settlers found gold in the area, as well as wanted the land for agriculture. As a result, the Cherokee were removed and displaced to land in what is now Oklahoma.
After the Cherokee were removed, white settlers turned the fertile land into farms. As the area grew, Black residents, about 1,100 of them, moved in. They established successful, busy, bustling areas, similar to those of Tulsa or Redwood. And where there was Black success, white rage was almost sure to follow. In 1912, racial tensions intensified when white residents began accusing Black men of raping and beating white women. After a string of violent lynchings, white mobs put Black residents on notice: leave, or be subjected to the same heinous fate. Black residents, forced to leave, fled for safety, with many seeking refuge in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and other urban areas.
After 1912, once Natives and Black residents had been expelled, Oscarville, and the whole of Forsyth County, was nearly 100% white, so imagine their shock when, in 1956, the United States Army Corps of Engineers informed residents that they were building a lake, and needed their land to do it. And similarly to how displaced Native and Black folks were treated, many of the white residents were underpaid for their (stolen) land, if paid at all.
These days, most people know Lake Lanier as the recreational hotspot in Georgia with an unusually high death rate. It’s said that there are ghosts that walk the bridge above, and arms that will drag you beneath the surface, perhaps all the way back down, a hundred feet deep, to what was once Oscarville.
When Lake Lanier, named for a Confederate general, was flooded, the town of Oscarville drowned, but the sins that allowed for its creation seem to keep bubbling to the surface.
And the white residents of a town that once was found themselves with the same fate as those who’d they’d displaced before.
They were almost white, but not quite.
To learn more about the history of Forsyth County and Lake Lanier, check out:
Southern Mysteries: What Lies Beneath the Surface of Lake Lanier
Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
