A church book discussion about lynchings piqued Wesley Edwards' curiosity in area hate crimes, leading to Austin Callaway. A longtime African-American friend, Bobbie Hart, confessed ignorance to the lynching, prompting them to form the group "Troup Together." Through archival research and interviews, they pieced together parts of Calloway's story.
The "knowledge deficit" is what worries Edwards. If Callaway's lynching remained a mystery all these years, what else don't they know about?
"If white people have one version of history and African-Americans have a different one, then we don't know what we don't know," he said. "We've got to bridge that gap."
Source: Wesley Edwards - Quoted in "'Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching", Emanuella Grinberg, CNN, 28 Jan 2017
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/index.html