The Woman With the Whiskey Bottle As Her Tombstone
Learning to distinguish between and having a compassion for-silence that protects pain and silence that protects injustice has been a difficult important lesson-Julie Buckner Armstrong
Rest in peace Mary Turner
May 19, 1918 in Valdosta, Georgia…
The day before, her 19-year-old husband,
hands cuffed behind his back, was strung up from a tree with hundreds in attendance
applauding his death.
She threatened to have her husband’s killers arrested. Outraged,
the Mob decided to teach her a lesson.
With her swollen belly and feet, she tried to flee but was captured at noon
and taken to a bridge. One of the Mob men picked a tree.
She was tied by her ankles and hung upside down and doused
in gasoline and motor oil from their automobiles. One of the Mob men lit a match.
Engulfed in flames hot enough to make Satan sweat, she writhed in pain as her skin bubbled
and boiled. Pieces of flesh and clothing hung from her body. The Mob men howled in glee.
Still alive, one of the Mob men took a knife and cut across abdomen as if she was cattle. The
Mob men cackled like ravenous hyenas. Her premature baby dropped from her womb and hit the
ground. It whimpered twice.
The Mob, with boots of pure hatred and evilness, crushed its tiny
skull and body. Their final act was to riddle her burned and bloody body with bullets until she
finally died. The Mob, satisfied, went home.
The next day, they returned to cut her down from the tree. Her and her baby was buried near the tree, a whiskey bottle marking their grave.
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