John Lee Eberhart, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration

Five counties in northeast Georgia—Madison, Elbert, Oglethorpe, Oconee, and Clarke—were the entire world for three generations of the Eberhart family. Landscapes ranged from deep rural isolation to a bustling, rail-connected, manufacturing mecca. The more than three decades between the birth of John Eberhart, about 1841, and that of his son Stokely (Stokes) in 1878 were a whirlwind. The railroad arrived—bringing the outside world with it; the Civil War emancipated, devastated, and nearly starved; and Reconstruction came and went.

Stokes probably thought the stories he heard about the gains African Americans made shortly after the Civil War were tall tales and not to be believed. Just months before he was born, Georgia adopted a new state constitution that instituted a poll tax used to disenfranchise Black voters. The lives of Stokes and his children, including a son named John Lee, were defined by a complex navigation of agrarian labor and the rigid, often violent, social codes of the Jim Crow era.

By 1921, the legal and social architecture of Jim Crow had reached its most claustrophobic peak. While the Eberhart family had transitioned from the status of property to citizens following the Civil War, the "Redeemer" governments (white Southern Democrats who sought to "redeem" the South from Reconstruction-era policies) of the late 19th century had systematically dismantled that citizenship. In the red clay hills of northeast Georgia, Jim Crow was not merely a set of "Whites Only" signs; it was an all-encompassing system of social and economic control. And it was under this system that the lynching occurred.

John Lee Eberhart was accused of killing Mrs. Walter Lee in February 1921. She was "shot to death in the yard of her home, barely fifty feet from the public highway," the Walter home being located "about three miles from Watkinsville on the Athens road."

In September 1918, when registering for the draft, John Lee told the county registrar his home was in Watkinsville, Oconee County, before signing the document with an X. In January 1920, the census taker listed Stokes Eberhart and family on Hog Mountain Road in the Watkinsville District of Oconee County. John Lee had to live and work amidst the oppression, and it cost him his life.

Even the local papers acknowledged the evidence against John Lee was circumstantial. Nonetheless, he was arrested in Athens the afternoon of the killing and placed in the Clarke County jail. The following is from the 24 February 1921 Jackson Herald (Jefferson, Georgia):

Late in the afternoon groups of men formed in and near the court house, and early in the evening the crowd swelled to not less than three thousand.

Sheriff Jackson caused the court house to be locked, and took every precaution to protect the prisoner. Near eight o'clock the crowd grew restless, and when a leader ordered them to enter the court house a mad rush was made, and the big plate-glass windows and doors were broken, and the crowd rushed into the building. A number of men were carrying acetylene torches, while others had crowbars, axes and other instruments with which to make their way into the jail. While the sheriff was arguing with a crowd on the third floor, a number of men rushed the elevator and entered the corridor, they proceeded to the cell, where the negro was confined, and it was only a few minutes until they had entered the cell, and, chaining the negro, they dragged him to the elevator, and rushed him downstairs, where he was hurriedly taken to a waiting automobile, which carried him to the scene of the crime.

Jackson Herald Headline

Milledge avenue was a mass of automobiles and vehicles of all kinds. It gave the appearance of one mammoth white way, and for over an hour this avenue was lined with automobiles rushing to the scene where the proposed burning was to take place. For over a mile on the Watkinsville road cars were parked, and people alighted and walked for over a mile, the parking point being the nearest to the scene they could reach, the road being lined with machines.

In the presence of five thousand men, the negro was chained to a pine tree, and dry kindling wood stacked around his person. When the preliminaries had been arranged, he was asked if he had any statement to make. The negro stated that he did not commit the crime. He stated that if he had, he would confess to it. Time and again the negro was given an opportunity to confess, but he stoutly declared his innocence. The torch was applied, and as the flames enveloped his body he was asked again to make a statement, and the last words he spoke was a positive denial of his guilt. However, the evidence was strong against him, and the determination of the crowd entered into the final disposition of his body by increasing the fire, which grew in high flames above his head.

The torch was applied about 9:30 o'clock, and shortly after the flames had covered his body, the crowd slowly and quietly dispersed, leaving the ashes and charred remains in a field across the road from the home where the scene of the crime had been enacted.

The Stokes Eberhart family was forced into a role of mourning that had to be performed carefully for their own safety. Watkinsville was no longer home; it was a crime scene. Historical data suggests that families of lynching victims were more likely to leave their counties than their neighbors. The Eberharts were now part of a growing exodus—a "voting with their feet" against a system that had failed to protect John Lee. They joined the millions who would eventually leave the South, carrying the trauma of the red clay hills with them to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia.

Where the Stokes Eberhart family was in 1920: Oconee County, Georgia.

Where the Stokes Eberhart family was in 1930: Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.

Chattanooga, 1907

By 1923, only two years after the white mob murdered John Lee, some Eberharts were already gone. Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Tennessee, sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of the South, was a massive rail and iron hub offering work and allowing family members to be out of Georgia while remaining close enough to maintain ties with those who stayed behind. For some, it was the final destination; for others, it was merely a stepping stone.

Stokes Eberhart was living at 1528 East Philadelphia Avenue in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan by 1928. For the 1930 census, he was listed as an "Auto Factory Laborer." Mary Anna, Stokely's wife, and at least five of their children made it to Detroit. In 1940, when son Cordell Eberhart registered for the World War II draft, his employer was listed as Ford Motor Co. of Dearborn. The "Five Dollar Day" at Ford, though it included intense corporate oversight, was not just a wage; it was a ticket to a middle-class life that was legally and socially impossible in the South.

Detroit Skyline, 1929

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A Note on the Absence of Grave Markers
Despite research into the final resting places of the Eberhart family across Georgia, Tennessee, and Michigan, no surviving tombstones or photographic records of markers have yet been located. This absence is a common and somber reality in African American genealogy from this era, where financial constraints of the Jim Crow South and the "living paycheck to paycheck" reality of early industrial migration often meant graves were marked with wooden crosses or fieldstones that have since succumbed to time. This lack of physical monuments serves as a silent testament to the systemic economic disenfranchisement the family faced, leaving their stories to be preserved not in stone, but through the records of their resilience and movement.

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Genealogical Notes

Children of John Eberhart (b. abt 1841) and Ann Moon (b. abt 1844):

• Oscar (b. abt 1868)
• Llewelyn (d. 30 Jan 1943 in Fulton Co, GA) moved to Chapel Hill, GA, west of Atlanta, by 1930.
• Jerome (b. abt 1872)
• Quilla Cully (d. 18 Jul 1945 in Chattanooga, Hamilton Co, TN) was a janitor for Crane Enamelware Co. in Chattanooga for more than 20 years. Two of his sons moved to Cincinnati, OH before 1945.
• John Lee (b. abt 1877)
• Stokely "Stokes" (b. 10 Aug 1878) moved to Detroit, MI by 1928, where he worked as an auto factory laborer. Stokes became a widower before 1950.
• 
  Willie (1879-1923) married a Mr. Smith and died of cancer of the uterus at about the age of 44 in Chattanooga, Hamilton Co, TN.
• Janie (d. 30 Sep 1970 in Fulton Co, GA) was still in Athens, Clarke Co, by the summer of 1945. One of her sons, Walter Clyde, was residing in Kansas City, MO by 1948.

Stokes Eberhart (b. 1878) married Mary Anna Williams (b. abt 1876) on 17 Mar 1894 in Oglethorpe Co. Their children:

• James (b. abt 1892)
• John Lee (1897-1921) was burned at the stake by a white mob in northeast Georgia.
• Adell (b. abt 1899) married Elmer Patman.
• 
  William "Will" Lou (1900-1938) was living and working at an auto foundry in Detroit by 1930. He died of Graves' Disease at Detroit Receiving Hospital, the city's first municipal hospital, opening in 1915. It was created specifically to care for the rapidly growing industrial population and emergency cases during Detroit's auto boom.
• Jessie J. (b. abt 1903) was an auto factory laborer in Detroit by 1930.
• Frank (d. 5 Apr 1923 in Chattanooga, Hamilton Co, TN) died of pneumonia about the age of 17.
• Cora L. (b. 15 Jun 1909) was residing in Detroit by Sep 1926, where she married Conley Shepard (1901-1978) of Asheville, NC. Cora later married Willie Wright, of Mississippi, on 2 Apr 1949 in Lucas Co, OH.
• William W. "Willie" (b. abt 1912) was residing in Detroit by 1930.
• Cordell (1914-1989) was in Detroit by 1930, and an employee of Ford Motor Co. by 1940. He married Louise Morrow (b. 1916), who was also a native of Georgia, and one of their sons was named John Lee (1936-2000).

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For more details on the lynching of John Lee Eberhart, see The Last Lynching in Athens by Donald E. Wilkes, Jr.

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