On this day in 1868, the Camilla Massacre took place when a march led by former representative Phillip Joiner in protest of the expulsion of black members from the Georgia General Assembly was viciously attacked by white supremacists.

The "Original 33" were the first 33 African-American members of the Georgia General Assembly who were elected to office in 1868, during the Reconstruction era.

They were among the first African-American state legislators in the United States, and were expelled by the white members of the General Assembly, who claimed black people could not hold office in Georgia.

The expelled members appealed to the federal government and state courts. In protest of the expulsion, former representative Phillip Joiner led a 25 mile march to Camilla, the county seat, on this day in 1868.

There, they were attacked by an armed white mob - approximately a dozen marchers were killed and 30-40 wounded. The Camilla Massacre began the era of de facto voting discrimination and political disenfranchisement of the black population in Georgia.

Although the expelled legislators eventually won a case in the Georgia Supreme Court (White v. Clements) that gave them the right to hold office, voter intimidation and de facto voting discrimination heightened to such a degree that Georgia went almost sixty years without having a single black legislator in its state congress, although they were legally allowed to do so.