Speaker 1: On today's episode of I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you a question, do you have
Speaker 2: a man made lake in your city or town? Cause
Speaker 2: if you do, there might be some black bodies under there.
Speaker 2: And I had absolutely no clue.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Maybe you didn't. I didn't no, I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: you didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Did you know that black American town are under man
Speaker 2: made lakes?
Speaker 1: Some of them Lake Lanier in Georgia. It's beautiful. Folks
Speaker 1: go there the boat fish jet ski.
Speaker 2: It's named after a poet, Sydney Lanier, and Lake Lanier
Speaker 2: was formed in nineteen fifty six by the Chattahoochee River.
Speaker 2: Now fifty years prior to that, it was a black
Speaker 2: town called Oscarville, where about eleven hundred black people live.
Speaker 2: It will burn to the ground in nineteen twelve and
Speaker 2: all the residents were forced out. See Rob Edwards. Ernest
Speaker 2: Knox and Oscar Daniel were teenagers, and they were arrested
Speaker 2: for the rape and murder of a young white woman
Speaker 2: in nineteen twelve. Now Rob Edwards They drug him about
Speaker 2: of jail, beat him with a crowbar, and lynched him
Speaker 2: from a telephone pole. The other two gentlemen, Daniel and Knox,
Speaker 2: they were sent to trial and found guilty on the
Speaker 2: same day the boys were sentenced to death by hanging.
Speaker 2: Now afterwards white men named themselves the night Riders, but
Speaker 2: they weren't cool with a talking car. Some of you
Speaker 2: might not get that reference, so I'm gonna move on.
Speaker 2: But those night Riders of nineteen twelve, oh, they forced
Speaker 2: black folks up out of town. They burned their homes,
Speaker 2: burned their land, burned their churches, burned their schools, and
Speaker 2: once the black families fled, Lake Lanier was built on
Speaker 2: top of what was burned down. Fifty years later, Lake
Speaker 2: Martin in Alabama, A black town is under there. Kowaliga,
Speaker 2: home to the first black owned railroad started by William E. Benson,
Speaker 2: and the Black School Kowaliga Academic and Industrial Institute, all
Speaker 2: under Lake Martin in Alabama. And it's not just lakes,
Speaker 2: oh No, they put parks on top of black towns too.
Speaker 2: Back in season one, we talked about the western edge
Speaker 2: of Central Park in New York City. A black town
Speaker 2: is under there, Seneca Village even where I live, Charlotte,
Speaker 2: North Carolina, home to the Panthers, the Hornets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know, chill. The city is suffering and.
Speaker 2: The state's largest man made lake, Lake Norman. It covers
Speaker 2: more than thirty two acres five hundred and twenty miles
Speaker 2: of shoreline, and it's got tons of history underneath.
Speaker 1: It's cotton mills under there.
Speaker 2: An entire Revolutionary War battlefield from seventeen eighty one is
Speaker 2: under there, remnants of old plantations and homes and highways,
Speaker 2: an abandoned airplane crash. So today's episode of I didn't know,
Speaker 2: maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: You've got homework.
Speaker 2: If there's a man made lake in your town, do
Speaker 2: a little research and see what was up under that
Speaker 2: out before they put ward on copper Us because it's
Speaker 2: black Town's under some of these man made lakes.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. No,