The AJC and the Controversial Race Cleansing Story

by A.man.I

Pulitzer award winning journalist Elliot Jaspin's new book, "Buried in Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Clensing in America" is getting some much needed attention. Jaspin accuses the Atlanta Journal Constitution of bowdlerizing a story he wrote about racial cleansing that occured in Forsyth County back in 1912. His book documents racial violence agianst blacks, how property belonging to blacks ended up being transferred to whites without any sales records, or legal title transfers, and why the AJC failed to run his story.


Elliot Jaspin
Richard Prince recently examined the issue in his Journal-isms column writing, "The reporter (Jaspin) who uncovered a 60-year pattern of expelling African Americans from communities around the country and wrote a series about it last year says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the flagship of the newspaper company he works for, tried to undermine what he produced."

According to reports, Cox newspapers around the country published the series, but the AJC didn't. Creative Loafing's John Sugg writes, "That created the odd circumstance in which the chain's largest newspaper didn't run high-profile articles by its own Washington bureau, stories that highlighted events in the AJC's own backyard."


A Cox Washington Bureau Chief is quoted as saying that AJC editors "are afraid of angering white people," and Jaspin said,"The stories I had written were edited to obscure the Atlanta newspaper's lackadaisical coverage," he says in his book. "Editors ignored clear conflicts of interest while editing the racial cleansing series."

Angering white people, how about angering blacks? Not only did people get terrorized out of their land, but it looks like a highly regarded newswpaper made a deliberate attempt to hide the truth.

Thanks to G. Daughters for the heads up.