Ben 00:02-00:04

Arese, welcome to Crime Capsule.

Orice 00:04-00:07

Thank you so much for having me. How are you doing?

Ben 00:07-00:17

Man, I am great. And I am so excited to get to talk to you about this book, because as I understand it, this is your first published monograph. Congratulations.

Orice 00:17-00:35

Thank you very much. That is true. And yes, it's my first. And I'm very proud of it. And I'm excited and grateful for the opportunity to tell this story. It's been living with me. for many years at this point. So I'm just glad it's out into the world.

Ben 00:35-00:59

Yeah, no, it is. It is a remarkable piece of work. And it is an incredibly powerful story. And there's just so much to get into here. Now, I want to ask you a little bit about your background first. Tell us, how did you come to writing? And this is, as I understand it, this is not your first writing project. You have worked on something for History Press previously. Is that right?

Orice 01:00-02:05

That's right. I worked on a book called Black Homesteaders of the South, which was released in 2022, authored by Bernice Bennett, who is one of my mentors in the genealogy space. And so she put together a compilation of these stories written by descendants of Black homesteaders, people who received land under the Homestead Act of 1862. But in the South, in the Southern states, in states like Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, et cetera. So yeah, that was exciting. That was one of my first writing projects professionally, in a way, other than, again, through Bernice Bennett, we wrote a lot of stories for the National Park Service. Oh, cool. Also about Black homesteaders for the Homestead National Park, which is in Nebraska. And I did a lot of writing as far as songwriting, which is where I that was my first, you know, professional output into the world as a songwriter.

Ben 02:05-02:05

Yeah.

Orice 02:05-02:34

So I wrote many songs for people. I wrote my own songs. I recorded four albums of music. And so, you know, in that way, I've always been a writer. But writing a book, I always thought I'd write a book about music at one point. And I have written a book about music that's not been published, but this book turns out to be my first book, not about music at all.

Ben 02:36-03:04

But it's got that lyricism to it, you know, on the level of the prose. And I'll have a question for you about that a little later. I tell you, you know, the kind of projects you work on, they really speak to a long history of pride and heritage in the South. I think of communities like Mount Bayou, obviously, and then Mossville, Louisiana, and so forth, where you have these deep, deep roots, right? Stretching back generations. You have deep roots with this particular story of Early County, don't you?

Orice 03:05-04:25

Oh, yes, absolutely. My family is seven generations in Early County, Georgia. So I feel a deep connection to that place, to those roots, even though it was a place I had never been to until 2017. And I didn't know anything about it until 2017. I tried to know more about it, but my grandmother left Early County in the early 1940s, and she never went back. And she never talked about it. She told us every day that she was from Blakely, Georgia. But she didn't tell us anything about that place. So I always had a longing to know more. And I didn't know, I don't even know that she knew that, you know, she was the seventh of, you know, generations born there. Wow. But yeah, I'm glad that I found that out because I've been able to really connect with my family, my extended family. and also discover my family's place in historical record, which is a pretty decent position that they're in, in this tapestry of American history, most of which we don't talk about very much, but a lot of it that should be brought to the forefront.

Ben 04:25-04:30

Absolutely. I imagine that Isabel Wilkerson's Warmth of Other Suns was a real important book for you, wasn't it?

Orice 04:30-04:39

I don't know how to answer that question. Now, are you referring to the fact that she mentions Early County in that book?

Ben 04:39-04:58

I am not, but I'm just thinking about the legacy of so many people who ended up migrating, you know, to try to find peace, freedom, opportunity in the region of the country, which we know, you know, had just been systematically keeping folks down for so long. And it's a sad story, but it's a story that has to be told.

Orice 04:58-05:23

Absolutely. And in that way, you're absolutely right. That book, changed the way that a lot of people perceived the Great Migration and that movement, you know, to the North or elsewhere in the United States. But, you know, because she does mention Early County in that book, obviously not in a positive way. Right.

Ben 05:23-05:25

Let's say it. Let's say it.

Orice 05:25-06:35

For obvious reasons, however, people were offended because the lynching that she talks about in her book never actually happened. Now, of course, there are many, many lynchings to talk about that happened in Early County. But people in Blakely are kind of, were offended by that particular book. However, still, I mean, it was a very difficult time period and difficult place to exist as black people. Yeah, it's time to reckon with that. I think that with my book, there's kind of, it's so irrefutable, all the, you know, the evidence and the pictures and the documents and the, and I have so much more that's not even in the book that I'm going to begin publishing over the years. And yeah, hopefully that the legacy will, you know, it'll be understood in the same way that Isabel needed to write that book. I needed to write this book and, you know, show the truth about what happened.

Ben 06:35-07:53

So I want to pick up on that thread right here and right now, because your narrative, your story is a story of erasure, right, of a community of power-holding white folks deep in the Jim Crow era, who sought to erase another community just from their backyard, their patch of woods. It was just, this is absolutely a story of violence and sorrow and murder, you know, all the way through. It is the worst of the worst in Jim Crow, right? But what is interesting It is also a story of erasure in terms of forgotten records. It's a story of erasure in terms of neglected information, details that have been discarded, ignored, obscured over time, right? Sort of erasure by neglect. And then your work is a work of recovery. Here you are digging down to find what is still there in memory, in the archives, in people's experience, of course speaking to your own family here. What was that work of recovery like when you knew you were up against so much historical erasure of the past?

Orice 07:53-08:53

Honestly, I didn't know how much erasure I was up against. When I first found this story in the newspaper, I thought I had the whole story. And as I kept digging, I kept understanding, wait, there's more here. There's more. I'm missing something. There's a lot more that happened here. And it really wasn't until I found the actual, transcripts, testimony from people in the book that I found in the courthouse, but that's not what I was there looking for. And that's what I, I don't know if I mentioned that in the book, I was looking for a completely different set of records when I found this packet full of written testimony, you know, from 1916, the year after the massacre.

Ben 08:55-09:10

Yeah, you do mention it. It is in part of your book. And honestly, if I can be completely frank with you, that moment in your narrative hit me like a thunderbolt. I can only imagine what it was like for you to come across this.

Orice 09:10-11:12

I was amazed. I was really… But even though I was amazed, I kind of knew it would be in the section that I was looking in, because they were kind of organized by year. So the case I was looking for was in 1921. So I said, OK, well, let me get that one. And then I saw five cases away, five boxes away in 1916. Let me grab that one, too, just in case. Just in case. The ghouls be in there or something like that. And I think I saw it before I even looked in the 1921 box. I could see it because it was thick. I mean, everything else in there was these small indictments that were just one-pagers or pamphlets that are folded up. This was a packet. So I could see it. I mean, immediately I saw it and said, Oh, let me grab that right now. Um, so I, I kind of, in a way I knew, but I didn't know. And again, knowing what it, knowing what it was, I still didn't know what the testimonies would say. So then as I'm reading the testimony, I'm still sitting in the courthouse, by the way. Everybody's around me doing their business that has to do with 2021 or whatever year it was. And I'm fully immersed in 1916, reading testimony about what happens in 1915. And I'm just like, oh my goodness. I have to stop reading this because the courthouse is going to close in 30 minutes. I have to copy everything. And I need to stay in Blakely tonight. And I need to read. everything that I can that I can copy. So that's what I did. And I read everything. And then I ended up having to go back, because there are things I didn't copy. And then I realized I could just use my phone instead of actually going to the Xerox machine. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Ben 11:12-11:15

You can hold that suck on a click, click, click.

Orice 11:15-12:12

Right. Because all I need is the words. I just need the words. I don't need to look pretty. I just need to know what the words are. And that was before I realized I was going to actually publish these testimonies in the book. Because at the end of the book, I do publish all the records that I found in the courthouse so that no one else has to go and dig for them like I did. But yeah, it was mind-blowing. And it also turns out that my cousin was there. And I didn't know she was there. This was during the pandemic, so we both had masks on. And I could see her eyes looked like my cousin. I was like, that looks like my cousin. And I'm staring at her. And she was like, hi, how are you doing? You know, just very Southern hospitality, just, you know. And I'm like, I'm so sorry for staring. You look so much like my cousin. And she said, oh, that's OK. That's no problem. And I said, but what is your name, by the way? And she told me her name. And I was like, you are my cousin.

Ben 12:12-12:14

And she said, who are you?

Orice 12:14-12:25

And I was like, it's Oris Jenkins. And she was like, oh my goodness, I didn't even recognize you with the mask on. And she's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I can't tell you.

Ben 12:25-12:36

You're like, you don't even want to know. Like, if we start talking about it for five minutes, we're going to be here for five hours. No, I love that. I love that.

Orice 12:36-13:05

That kind of time. But she came to the book signing I did in Blakely. And so I got to, she brought a book and I said, this is what I was doing that day in the courthouse that we saw each other. And she was like, oh my goodness, she was so proud that this is what I was working on. Because her grandfather's sister, her great-grandfather's sister is actually in the book and was actually a survivor of the massacre. So I start off the book talking about her great-grandfather's sister.

Ben 13:08-15:18

Let's do this. We'll come back to the question of recovery later, because I have a specific question for you about that. But let's go to 1915. It is not a good time to be a black person in the South in 1915. And it has not been, and it will continue to not be, and this is the worst of the worst. The Southern Poverty Law Center did a study a couple years ago where they investigated the number of Confederate monuments that went up by year in the South, okay, following the Civil War. And it's a really interesting graph. It's just the data tells the story. The data tells the story, right? So, after the end of the Civil War, not a lot of activity during Reconstruction, obviously, with Northern troops, Northern-installed governors and so forth. But then once Reconstruction ends, you see this little trickle upwards, little trickle upwards. And then, in 1910, 50th anniversary, right? Almost the 50th anniversary of the war. 1910 is the peak year. in the entire history of 19th and 20th centuries for the number of Confederate monuments installed in southern cities, often at courthouses, you know, and you can look on the data and see this is when they were going up. So, And then it goes down a little bit until you get back to the 50s, right? And then you get into that second little peak in the 50s. But 1910 is absolute most number all across the South. It is incontrovertible, that particular date. And that tells us something about the persistent myth of the lost cause and all that kind of stuff, right? We don't need to go over that old ground. That is very well established. What is interesting is that 1915, when the early county massacre happens, I mean, if you think about it, that is just a couple of years, within a couple of years of that peak of the movement, right? The peak of the lost cause kind of hitting its stride. Tell us what was going on in early county in 1915. Just take us straight there.

Orice 15:18-18:16

Yeah, sure. Well, I'll tell you from a couple of different perspectives, because outside of the book, I've also noticed around 1910, And a little bit before that, it's also the time when confederate soldiers, former confederate soldiers are receiving pensions. You know, there were laws passed in those southern states that allowed for those soldiers to receive pensions for being in the confederate army. So that's happening. I see those records all the time when I'm doing research in early county and in Alabama as well. that, you know, these folks are receiving the pensions. And so they're still there, you know, they're older. A lot of them are receiving pensions because of their, you know, their age, not able to work anymore. And so you think about kind of this old guard of the South, kind of still being the overarching, you know, the elder society, basically. And a lot of them, might be, you know, as they put it, invalid in the pensions, but they still had a lot of influence and power over the community. And so that's the community that the Goolsbee family is living in. And it's also why they're kind of unique, because usually, you know, you have white landowners and white overseers and But the Goolsbees, they own their own land. And I'm not exactly sure all the factors that went into this happening, but the Goolsbees ended up being more affluent than most people would think black people were in rural Georgia in 1915. So that kind of creates a very different power dynamic, I would say, because you have older Confederates who are, you know, invalid or disabled or whatever, who are jealous of Black people who have land, can work for themselves. So that's kind of why a lot of laws are specifically targeted towards Black people. um to kind of bring them down as as they progressed as we progressed upward they needed something that was going to bring them down so that's where a lot of these jim crow laws come from and and even i think even those monuments that you're talking about i think they serve as a reminder um yep yep yep it's know your place you know like we're going to re-establish the old order and you know what you have i mean the ghoulsby family so interesting is because they were not

Ben 18:17-18:33

sharecroppers, which was just kind of the standard model at that time, the sort of replacement of institutional slavery, right? It's like, this is just slavery by other means, right? But your ancestors there, the Goolsbee family, they did not fit that model. I can see that tension emerging very early on in your story.

Orice 18:33-20:44

Yeah. Well, the key to that, though, I think was probably learning to read and write. And that's something that was made illegal in the state of Georgia during slavery, that you could not teach black people to read and write, even if they were free. They could not learn how to read and write. But somehow, Granison Goolsby, who's one of the main subjects of the book, his father, whose name was Mike, a different Mike that's in the book, Mike Goolsby, the older, he learned how to write. I have his signature, so I know he knew how to write at some point. And I think, I don't know if it was during slavery, after slavery, But he also taught his son, Granison, well somebody taught Granison how to read and write. And I know exactly what year he learned how to read and write. At the time he learned to read and write, he would have been around 23 years old. Which to us might sound way past the age you're supposed to learn how to read and write. But that was, his father was probably in his 40s or 50s or 60s when he learned how to read and write. you know, comparatively, it worked out in that way, you know, to be better off that, you know, Grannison could read and write. And I think when you read those sharecropping contracts and you realize there's no way to win, there's no way to come up, you're going to end up owing and owing and owing. That was not the goal for Grannison at that point. You know, he knew he needed to actually get land and he was, a part of the Freemasonry movement as well. So, he actually was able to purchase land from his lodge brothers. And from what I can tell, it's land they didn't even live on. So, he might have used it. He might have rented it out to other black people. He might have just farmed on it and sold the goods. I'm not exactly sure. But, you know, he was very intelligent in figuring out how to gain income. you know, without using that sharecropping process.

Ben 20:44-21:34

And the community that you describe near present day, near present-day Blakely is I mean it's very close proximity, you know what I mean? It's like these folks were living within striking distance of one another, you know, walking wagon wheel, you know, distance, horse distance. It's not super, super spread out, right? Which is one of the reasons that when this fateful encounter took place in 1915, it set in motion a chain of events that just spread over the whole area very quickly. So will you describe for us what happened that day when this particular white landowner showed up and an altercation on the side of the road? Just take us there.

Orice 21:34-24:54

Sure, and I'll just correct you already. There was no white landowner in this altercation. So again, we're coming with that jealousy again, because this white man did not own any land. He did not own anything. He was hired as an overseer on someone else's plantation in Early County. Thank you. So he's, you know, and that's kind of what the story is that because they were riding, like you said, in wagons, you know, they call them buggies, mule and buggy. Ulysses Buggy was supposedly very, very nice. Possibly nicer than this white man's was. So that could also be a source of how this altercation started. But they're riding in the buggies. They're going down the road. You know, they're coming in opposite directions. And it was custom at that time for you to get out of the road to let a white person pass if you were black. However, that custom might have been more so for black people that were just on a mule. I mean, they didn't have a buggy. You know, if you're a black person on a mule, you take the mule out the road, let the white person pass on their carriage. I don't know if they had a lot of black people that had buggies as well, because where they were on the road, Ulysses was able to get his mule out of the road, but he couldn't get the buggy out of the road. There's a huge clay bank. He said it was about 10 inches high. you know, the buggy is not going to go up there. There was also a cotton patch there. So the buggy would have been on, you know, in the cotton and everything. So he thought he did the best that he could by getting the mule out of the road, pulling over all the way, all the way up against the wheel is up against the clay bank. But that was not satisfactory to this white man. And so he stopped his buggy. got out of his buggy and drew a pistol on Ulysses Goolsby, who is the teenage son of Granison Goolsby, who I was talking about earlier. It's his oldest son. He was a teenager. He was a teenager just going to a wedding ceremony or celebration with his friends. And he is now staring down the barrel of a pistol. Thankfully, that white man had two young white boys in his buggy that stopped him from killing Ulysses Goolsbee. But the man still said, OK, well, I won't kill him, but give me my buggy whip. And he proceeded to whip Ulysses Goolsbee just all over his left side and even gave him a gash in his face. And basically the way that people describe it, that knew him and saw him, say that that white man split Ulysses' face in two. That's how they described how bad the gash was. And you could see the scar on the next day.

Ben 24:56-25:55

It's it is remarkable when you look back on this the guy's name was henry vilpil pig. Is that right? Henry, vilipede. Yeah, vilipede vilipede, you know, you look back on on That moment and it's like it's almost like the butterfly effect. You know what? I mean? It's kind of like like that one encounter bad timing, you know, like like you know, if either one of them had been on that road 15 minutes earlier or later or something like that, you know, would everything have happened thereafter? It's hard to know, but like his anger and his hate just set in motion this chain of events that ended up infecting an entire county and, you know, an entire community and changing the lives of Well, I mean, he lost his own life shortly thereafter, and I'll get you to tell us how, but, I mean, changed the life of everyone in that community for the next 100 years. And it's just, it is really remarkable how one act of hate like that can translate into generational repercussions, isn't it?

Orice 25:55-26:32

Yeah. But unfortunately, it's very common. And that's something that happened in all these cases. You know, there were race massacres all over the country during this time period. And it's kind of eerie how similar they all are. And they all kind of did start with some sort of chance moment, whether it's in an elevator or starting with the, you know, just it's very, very interesting to me how something so trivial. I mean, this is road rage is what we're talking about right here. Right.

Ben 26:32-26:34

Before the automobile. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Orice 26:34-27:07

Pre-car road rage. Yeah. This is road rage. So can you imagine, you know, if you're on, you know, somewhere, you know, in Slidell or wherever, you know, and someone wants to cut you off the road and you're just, you want to, you take your gun out there, you're not going to do that. You have sense. Right. And even if, even if that were to happen, It would be clear that whoever is brandishing the gun is in the wrong, right?

Ben 27:07-27:12

Not in 1915, not in South Georgia.

Orice 27:12-30:17

It didn't matter what was wrong or right. It only mattered who was white or black. Yeah. That's the only thing that mattered. So, no one cared that Ulysses had his face cut open except for his father. even his father wasn't sure who was right. That was kind of the confusing thing. And again, you have to put your mindset into 1915. These are very old school people here. But even his father was like, well, why did this white man just hit you for no reason? That doesn't make any sense. Either you did something or he's crazy. I mean, either way, Granison felt he needed to get to the bottom of what happened on the road that day. So the next day, he goes to Henry Zillow Peak's house. And, you know, supposedly he was just going to find out what happened and to see if his son had hurt, you know, had damaged the buggy or whatever.

You know, Granison was going to pay for it and, you know, just try to resolve the conflict. But that is not what happened. Henry Villapique came out of the house and saw not just Granison, but Granison also brought Ulysses and his second oldest son, Mike. And also there's a fourth black person there named Charlie Gibbons, who is the one that showed them where Henry Villapique lived. And when he sees these four black people, you know, he's like, well, what do y'all want? And then he notices the scar on Ulysses' face and he realizes, oh, that's who I hit yesterday. Okay, he's got his pistol and he starts shooting immediately at the Goolsby's. And so, Granison was not just going to stand there and get shot, but he did have two concealed weapons and his buggy that no one else knew about.

So, he was able to get his gun, I think in between Villapique's second and third shot, he was actually able to get all of Villapique's shots missed. Granderson was able to get his gun and shoot him in the arm so that he actually dropped his gun. So Granderson was not hit at all, but he was shooting at Henry Villapique at this point, who now had no gun, and was turning around back to the house and calling for his wife to bring his other gun, his shotgun.

And Grannison kept shooting as he was, as Villipeak was trying to go and get this other gun. Grannison kept shooting and Villipeak ended up collapsing as the Goolsbees leave. And the Goolsbees knew at that point, again, it doesn't matter who was right or who was wrong. They just shot a white man, and they're black, and they knew they needed to get out of there.

Ben 30:19-30:48

that is a perfect place to pause for a moment, at that moment of just utter tension and uncertainty and fear as to what all of this was going to mean for them and for their family and for their community. We will pick this story up right back next week. Aris, thank you so much for joining us. This has been incredible. Thank you for having me.