In 1912, a young girl's murder rocked the rural community of Forsyth County, Georgia and led a mob of whites to lynch a black man on the town square. Later, bands of night-riders declared Forsyth "whites-only" and sent 1,100 citizens running for their lives, slowly erasing all evidence of their crime.

Blood at the Root is a sweeping American tale, spanning the Cherokee removals of the 1830s, the promise of Reconstruction and the crushing injustice of Forsyth's racial cleansing. The story continues, including a violent attack on civil rights activists in 1987 as residents fought to "Keep Forsyth White", well into the 1990s. Patrick Phillips breaks the century-long silence of his hometown and uncovers a history of racial terrorism that shapes America in the twenty-first century.