Audio clip
Jeff Bishop
A historical group wants to use the “power of place” to remind locals and tourists of a Cherokee internment camp in LaFayette.
Jeff Bishop, president of the Trail of Tears Association Georgia Chapter, will meet with LaFayette City Council members Monday night to discuss adding the site of Fort Cumming to the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
The site already has a sign at the corner of Indiana and Main streets in LaFayette, but Mr. Bishop said a more powerful exhibit would inform local residents and draw tourists.
At the fort, as many as 1,000 Cherokees were detained for a short period in 1838 before being forced westward to Oklahoma, historians say.
“It happened right here,” Mr. Bishop said.
Dr. David Boyle, vice president of the Walker County Historical Society, said the exhibit and the listing would be a strong reminder of a brutal but significant turning point in the county’s history.
“It was essentially a concentration camp for the ethnic cleansing of these people,” he said of Fort Cumming. “If it was going on today, that’s what it would be called.”
On Monday morning, Mr. Bishop will sign papers with officials in Cedartown, Ga., to certify a portion of the city’s park as part of the trail after the Legislature passed a bill allowing for the certification.
After LaFayette’s site, the group will move on to 13 other similar camps in North Georgia, he said.
“This is the next phase of interpreting the (Cherokee) removal in Georgia,” Mr. Bishop said. “We’re trying to determine what sites in Georgia would be high-impact sites.”
Officially listing Fort Cumming could add to Walker County’s already impressive draw for history buffs or people retracing their ancestors’ lives, he said.
Walker County Commissioner Bebe Heiskell said the region may be better known for Civil War history, but American Indian heritage was equally important. She said both, if marketed properly, could draw tourists to the county.
“We’re rich in Native American history, and we need to let the world know,” Ms. Heiskell said.
Andy began working at the Times Free Press in July 2008 as a general assignment reporter before focusing on Northwest Georgia and Georgia politics in May of 2009. Before coming to the Times Free Press, Andy worked for the Anniston Star, the Rome News Tribune and the Campus Carrier at Berry College, where he graduated with a communications degree in 2006. He is pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Tennessee ...
I think this is a good thing myself. When i was a kid growing up in La Fayette my brother Gene Cohen and me use to go all over the City and the country side to. WE would find a lot of arrow heads back then in the country sometimes even in the City. I really wish we had enough sense back then to put them up and saved them. WE were always going from La Fayette to Chattanooga Tennessee where some of our kin folk lived.It wasn't so bad back in those days you could hitch hike just about anywhere in the United States with out being afraid of getting killed. I think I spent about half of my young years in the hills in the country and on the two creeks that run through the city there.I'm 72 years old now and live here in Alamogordo,New Mexico which is just under a hundred mile north of El Paso Texas. Otero County has the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation about thirty miles north east of Alamogordo. MY Daughter was in the Air Force for eight years and stationed here at Holloman Air Force Base. That's how I got out here from Georgia. We've lived here now for sixteen years. Someone there may remember Gene and R.L Cohen when they read this and I want them to know that I'm still with them. Gene passed away back in 1998. Well I do know that the Indians were in La Fayette and Walker county because of all the arrow heads we use to find there.Thank you very much, R.L Cohen
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