Convict Leasing, Lynch Mobs, and the Killing of Mary Turner
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe Kuner
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In May of 1918, a white plantation owner in Georgia was killed by a Black laborer he had beaten and abused. What followed wasn’t a trial or investigation… it was a mob. A violent, racist mob that left 13 people dead, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child. This episode walks through the brutal aftermath of Hampton Smith’s murder, how the system of convict leasing laid the groundwork for modern-day slavery, and why Mary Turner’s story still echoes over a century later. It’s about power, fear, and the cost of speaking out when you’re not supposed to.
#MaryTurner #TrueCrimePodcast #HistoricalTrueCrime #BrooksCounty #ConvictLeasing #GeorgiaHistory #AntiLynching #SidneyJohnson
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 1918, Georgia, a plantation owner with a reputation for beating the help ends up dead. |
| 0:07.1 | And what follows isn't justice. |
| 0:09.4 | It's a mob with a hit list and zero interest in getting the right guy. |
| 0:14.4 | 13 people would be murdered. |
| 0:16.4 | One of them, eight months pregnant. |
| 0:18.8 | This isn't just a story about a crime. |
| 0:22.1 | It's about what happens when power, racism, and revenge all link arms and start marching. Before we dive in, if you like your |
| 0:28.9 | true crime brief and bingeable, you're in the right place. Hit follow now for at least two new |
| 0:34.0 | episodes every week. This is 10-minute murder. Let's get into it. |
| 0:58.7 | Things weren't exactly peaceful, but they were holding, barely. |
| 1:04.0 | Tensions simmered just beneath the surface, like a pot someone forgot they left on the stove. |
| 1:14.3 | And then someone turned the heat all the way up. Enter Hampton Smith, mid-20s, wealthy, white, and unfortunately in charge of a lot more than just his own bad decisions. He ran a place called Old Joyce Plantation, near Morven |
| 1:20.4 | in Brooks County. The guy had money, but when it came to character, that account was overdrawn. |
| 1:26.9 | Hampton needed labor to keep his fields productive |
| 1:29.4 | and his profits steady. What he didn't need, apparently, was any level of decency or humanity |
| 1:35.4 | and how he got it. Hampton Smith wasn't just disliked. He was infamous, known for beating his |
| 1:42.5 | workers and squeezing every ounce of labor out of them. |
| 1:46.0 | The man turned his plantation into a sweat-soaked nightmare. |
| 1:49.7 | It wasn't exactly a recruitment dream. |
| 1:52.3 | And, shocker, people didn't line up for the job. |
| 1:55.9 | So Hampton did what many white plantation owners in the South were doing after the abolition of slavery. |
| 2:01.2 | He went to jail, not as an inmate, but as a shopper. |
... |
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