Word: americus
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...heard-the 830,000-member Southern branch of the Presbyterian Church. In a five-day conference at Birmingham, the 97th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. drafted a sharply worded statement condemning discrimination in the schools, defending Koinonia, the besieged interracial community at Americus, Ga. (TIME, April 29), and scourging the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens' Councils...
...Georgia grand jury finally got around to investigating Koinonia Farm, the famed interracial community near Americus. After twelve years of peaceful existence, rumors began to fly with the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation decision that there was "sex mixing" at the farm and that it harbored Communist spies. The jury's 16-page report revived the old accusations, also charged that Koinonia was masquerading as a religious group to avoid payment of taxes and that the violence was largely perpetrated by the farm members themselves as a bid for sympathy. (Koinonia answered back with an eleven-page, point...
...Citizens Bank of Americus refused to grant Koinonia more loans; the gas supplier for the farm's heating and cooking, the hardware dealer, the tractor dealer, and the mechanic who serviced the farm vehicles refused to do business with Koinonia. The farm's gas tank was shot up, its roadside produce stand (with cold-storage and meat-processing equipment) was dynamited and destroyed. The main building on an adjoining farm owned by the community was burned to the ground, and later twelve shotgun blasts were fired into the farm, showering some of the Koinonia children with pellets...
...Those Queer Nigger-Lovers." For years the people of Americus took little notice of "those crazy race mixers." But after the Supreme Court desegregation decision in 1954 there began to be ugly rumors: "Communist spies" were harbored there; "sex mixing" was practiced. When Clarence Jordan endorsed the applications of two Negroes for admission to Georgia State College of Business Administration, things began to happen. There were anonymous phone calls; the roadside signs were ripped down at night; retailers turned down Koinonia produce...
Some people in Americus were shocked. Others said: "I'll bet those queer nigger-lovers did it themselves. We ought to run them out of the county...