This Black Town Was Flooded In The Interests Of White Recreation And Fun

Aerial view of submerge town
Via The Center For Land Use Interpretation
Tremain Prioleau II
November 27, 2022

Oscarville was a Black town in Georgia that was burned to the ground after the arrest of Rob Edwards, Earnest Knox, and Oscar Daniel, Black teenagers accused of raping and murdering a white woman.

Edwards was lynched from a telephone pole. Daniel and Knox were sentenced to death by hanging. After the trial, white men forced our families to flee their homes. They had plans for our land.

Oscarville is now known as Lake Lanier. It is now of the most popular lakes in Georgia, and it holds this repressed truth of America’s violent history of land expulsion.

The story of Lake Lanier has morphed into a variety of myths, from supernatural sightings to haunting tales. However, every one of them erases the truth of the pure evil that occurred there. Black people were murdered for this lake to exist.

Drowned towns were once shining Black communities. However, expansion, profit, and white supremacy all mattered more to this country than our lives and this evil use of water proves just that.

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