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selected persons on the streets, brutally beating them.⁹ The future NAACP leader, Walter White, then a boy of eleven, remembered all his life that evening of "terror and bitterness" in which "I learned who I was."¹⁰ Alma Thomas's uncle, Willie Cantey, and his friend Henry Lincoln Johnson, later the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, D.C., both worked at the customs house in Atlanta. Their employer, recognizing the dangers that existed, kept them out of harm's way by allowing them to spend the night in the offices until it was safe to venture out.¹¹ The violence resulted in numerous deaths of innocent African American citizens. President Roosevelt, following the precedent of McKinley who failed to intervene when mobs attacked black soldiers and Federal officials, never publically [sic] condemned the riot.¹²

The atmosphere of fear and unease in Georgia, and the desire for greater opportunities for their daughters led John and Amelia Thomas to leave the South the following year. As John Maurice recalls, "Education was not available for young colored children past the ninth grade. After that , you had to go away to high school."¹³

Beginning A New Life: 1907-1921

Sally Cantey McDuffie, Amelia's sister, and her husband Joseph, one of the few clerks employed by the government, resided in the nation's capital. They encouraged the Thomases to move to that city. The family boarded the train, for

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