PRESIDENT ' S MESSAGE
Message From the President
CRAIG CLELAND Ogletree , Deakins , Nash , Smoak & Stewart , PC Craig . Cleland @ ogletreedeakins . com
On August 21 , 1945 , Porter
Flournoy Turner was lynched late at night in my neighborhood , Druid Hills , where I walk . His body was found in the pre-dawn hours on a front lawn across the street from where his abandoned cab was parked . Mr . Turner had been stabbed repeatedly in his chest and back . A year later , a State of Georgia Assistant Attorney General , Dan Duke , announced that undercover informants had overheard members of the Klavalier Klub , the KKK ’ s terrorist arm , boasting during a covert meeting about killing Mr . Turner . Despite this , the investigation of his murder stalled out . No one was ever arrested .
Born in 1896 on a farm in Greensboro , Georgia , Porter Turner had moved to Atlanta ’ s Fourth Ward in the 1920s when he was in his 20s . There , he met and married Lois Colbert , and they raised two sons . To provide for his young family , he worked very long hours driving a cab in addition to working in the service garage of a Chrysler dealership . The Turners belonged to Big Bethel AME Church .
Thanks to research from Druid Hills neighbors , we now know Mr . Turner ’ s story . And there are other stories . Outside the County Courthouse in Decatur stands a new marker about racial terror lynching in America from 1877 to 1950 and those lynched in DeKalb County during this period . Mr . Turner
4 October / November 2020 and other known victims are named . A separate marker about him will soon stand in one of the Olmsted Linear Parks , named for Frederick Law Olmsted , running through Druid Hills along Ponce de Leon Avenue .*
Walking my neighborhood and the linear parks during the pandemic also takes me past a nearly imperceptible headstone identifying the “ Jefferson Davis Highway GA .” Originally stretching to the Canadian border and the Northwest , the highway ’ s name lasted even after the government ’ s new highway numbering system took effect in 1925 . A similar headstone near Agnes Scott College was erected six years later , in 1931 — fourteen years before Mr . Turner was lynched . It was removed at the College ’ s urging in 2018 .
Mr . Turner ’ s lynching . The highway headstone . Both within blocks of my house . As William Faulkner said , “ The past is never dead . It ’ s not even past .” He meant something else by that . But his quote reminds me that the legacy of our country ’ s racial history is still very present . During this time of national racial reckoning , we need not fear confronting this past . Facing up to failings is the only way to see them anew and the only chance of ensuring they don ’ t happen again . For lawyers , Mr . Turner and the headstone remind us to remain vigilant in calling out injustice where we find it and in seeking justice for all .
Craig Cleland , Atlanta Bar Association President