Forsyth County, Georgia, boasts a vibrant job market, outstanding schools, and one of the nation’s fastest-rising populations. But beneath that prosperity is a history of virulent racism that endured, astoundingly, until the late 20th century.

In the wake of the rape and fatal beating of a young woman in 1912, white residents lynched one African American spuriously accused of the crime and then drove off every one of Forsyth’s black inhabitants through violence and intimidation. The 247-square-mile patch of hill country north of Atlanta remained a notorious “white county” for 75 years.

Patrick Phillips was raised there. An award-winning poet and associate professor of English at Drew University, he examines Forsyth County’s disquieting past and the shadow it casts on racial tensions afflicting the nation today in a discussion of his new book Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America.