Tant: New book reveals 'forgotten history'

February is Black History Month, and this year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. A new book by Athens author Al Hester is a revealing study of the lives and accomplishments of two courageous black men in the Reconstruction Era that saw the post-slavery rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow racial segregation.

"Enduring Legacy: Clarke County, Georgia's Ex-Slave Legislators Madison Davis and Alfred Richardson" is a detailed but readable look at "hidden history" that happened right here in Athens and surrounding areas. Though today's Athens has a dubious reputation as a bastion of liberalism, Hester's book documents a climate of white supremacy in Athens that reached a fever pitch when Davis and Richardson became the first blacks elected to state office in Georgia when they won seats in the state legislature during the election of 1868.

Angry whites quickly mounted campaigns to remove both duly elected legislators from their offices. Newspapers howled against the "bayonet election," as the Macon Telegraph called the enfranchisement of black men who had so recently been held in slavery's shackles.

Davis and Richardson both were hated and feared by reactionary whites, though both men were very different in style and temperament.

"Madison Davis generally was a voice of moderation," writes Hester, "seeking good relations with whites. He could, when necessary, use firmness and direct action, but whites generally trusted him to be moderate in his approaches. Richardson, on the other hand, fought physically with the Ku Klux Klan and risked his life to relate before the Joint Congressional Committee the atrocities and terrorism used to wound or kill African Americans. He was wounded as the Klan attacked his house and we know he killed one white man and injured another. He may have died from poisoning because his enemies wanted him dead. Davis generally took a measured approach. Richardson was generally militant. Probably both approaches were necessary during the early efforts to bring freedom and equality to African Americans after Ema

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