The trials of Joe Rawlins—a popular, well-to-do South Georgia farmer, a Baptist preacher and father of five—and his sones ended a bitter feud that lasted for more than twenty years. Joe Rawlins and W. L. Carter argued over property rights, stray livestock, fishing rights, even each other's character. Rawlins moved twice and each time he thought he had seen the last of his archenemy. But each time, Carter showed up and bought land bordering Rawlins' farm. Was it a coincidence or was Rawlins being pursued? As the acrimony peaked, Rawlins tried to kill Carter, but failed. Then he hired an assassin and sent his own sons to wipe out the entire Carter family. But the only victims of the attempt were two teenage Carter children.
The trials that followed brought a festival atmosphere to Valdosta, Georgia. Excursion trains ferried several thousand people to town for the trial. Joe Rawlins became one of the most quoted condemned men in Georgia history, and the demand for accounts of the trial and subsequent appeals turned the twice-a-week Valdosta Times into a daily newspaper.
Blind Obedience tells how the testimony of Alf Moore, an African-American man, was critical to putting a white man on the gallows, possibly the first time a black man's testimony was taken so seriously. The book also documents a series of appeals by Macon attorney John Randolph Cooper that delayed the hanging of Rawlins for sixteen months, a respite that was unheard of at the time. Even today, the Rawlins case is remembered as the most famous murder case in the history of Lowndes County, as well as one of the most notorious in Southern history.
