The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-12-31
FOUR NEGROES SHOT TN PITCHED BATTLE WITH GEORGIA POSSE Assassination of Overseer Precipitates a Race
 War NEGROES BURNED TO DEATH IN CABINS Posses Are Led By Sheriff-No Lynchings-Negroes Killed In
 Resisting the Officers
 of the Law

BIakeIy, Ga, December 30.--Four me- Groes were shot and killed, two burned to death in a negro cabin, two white posscmen seriously wounded and sew erai other whites slightly hurt in a series of pitched battles near here to- day growing out of the assassination near here last night of Henry ViiIi- piGue, an overseer on the r. II. Coach man plantation, according to reports reaching here tonight. 1t was report ed later that two other negroes were burned to death in the cabin which
 Villipigue was shot in the back with q load of buckshot near his home last night. He had had trouble several days ago with Grandson Goolsby and his sons, Mike and Ulysses, negroes, who lived on plantation adjoining that in charge of villipigue It was said Villipgue had thrashed one of the boys for an insolent remark. News of the assassination reached here today and rewards of Sl0o each were offered for Goolsby and his sons who had fled
 Posses were formed, one being led by Sheriff Howell of Early county, in which the killing took place. According to the best information reaching here Grandson Goolsby and an unknown negro were shot and killed by the sheriff's posse, Grandi- sons sons were burned to death later in ,, l,i ;,, fuge after being driven from the one in which their father and the other negro were killed, and Barry Hightower and James Burton, the former a cousin to Grandson Goolsby, were killed early in the afternoon by posse composed of white farmers. aroused over the death of their neighbor.
 ONLY WHITE PERSONS
 Villjpisue and his wife were the only white persons on the Coachman planta.- ton and rhe killing did not become gen erally known until today when news of 1t aroused whites throughout the county and those in the lower part of Clay coun- ty adjoining. It was not known how many posses were formed but reports today said that several bands of about 50. men each were securing the country d1Ou2 the ChlttaHoocnee FlVef pottouiS near which the plantation was situated. Swamps adjoining the river which di- vides Georgia and Alabama in this sec- ton were searched and negro cabins were visited by angry men seeking the Goos- bys. As the day passed additional men joined the hunt. Sheriff Howell late to- day sent in a call here for additional deputies with guns to help him cap- ture the suspected negroes and to prevent their being lynched.
 The posse which killed Hightower and Burton was said to be carrying on a search independent of that led by the sheriff. Hightower's cabin was visited because of his kinship to the Goolsbys. Reports reaching here were to the effect that when the whites rushed toward the cabin either Hightower or Burton opened fire without parleying. The whites re- turned voley for volley and suddenly fire from the cabin ceased. The white men rushed into it and found the two negroes were the only occupants of the cabin Both were dead. Realizing that the negroes they sought were not in that cabin the possemen left the dead negroes and renewed their search.
 GOOLSBYS ARE FOUND
 It was later in the afternoon that Sher- if Howell and his deputies, aided by a number of white farmers, came upon a cabin about seven miles west of here in which the Goolsbys were reported to be barricaded and heavily armed. Demands from the sheriff for their surrender brought volley of shots from the cabin.
 Several of the whites were wounded. 1t was said and the sheriff and his men took cover and opened fire on the cabin. More than hundred shots were fired in
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