Just nine years after Augusta Institute’s founding in Georgia, a bloody massacre took place directly across the Savannah River in Hamburg, South Carolina. Since 1867, the leaders of the institute – a small, all-Black seminary – had endured various attacks by local white citizens for educating Black students following the civil war. But the Hamburg massacre, which resulted in the execution of six Black men ahead of one of the most contentious presidential elections in US history, epitomized the extent of post-emancipation violence against Black advancement. Designed to terrorize newly freed citizens, the massacre set the standard for how Black...