On a quiet stretch of White and Lawton streets, in southwest Atlanta, there’s no marker. No sign. Just a patch of sidewalk, cars passing, and weeds curling from a cracked curb that offers no clues to its past. 

But in the summer of 1911, this is where Lizzie Watts was found — her throat slashed, her body dragged and hidden in a tangle of bushes. Today, few know her name.

Atlanta is a city that remembers. Civil rights legends, Olympic torchbearers, and hip-hop architects live on in murals, street signs, and monuments. But beneath the concrete, beyond the beltlines and broken sidewalks, is a history that whispers through the soil. It is a history without plaques. A history of blood. A story of forgotten Black women.

From 1910 to 1912, at least 19 Black women were killed in eerily similar ways in Atlanta. Their lives and their deaths were shrouded in neglect, buried by indifference, and disappeared from collective memory. Many were believed to be victims of a mysterious figure the press dubbed the “Atlanta Ripper.”  

The pattern was obvious. Detectives at the time admitted that the methods were the same— head trauma, throat cutting, weekend killings were repeated with precision. But police hesitated to call it serial murder. 

Some officials insisted these were just “drunken arguments,” or “Saturday night violence” in Negro neighborhoods. 

Judge N.R. Broyles claimed, “There are at least 1,000 Negro men in Atlanta today who stand ready to cut the throats of their wives at the slightest provocation,” and stated that there was “no such thing as a Black Jack the Ripper.” 

Others in the white press, like in The Atlanta Journal and The New York Times, blamed alcohol, domestic disputes, or even Black women themselves, implying their deaths were inevitable or justified. 

In one case, a Black preacher, the Rev. Henry Hugh Proctor, told his congregation at First Congregational Church that the killings were a divine judgment for moral laxity in the Black community. His sermon was titled, “Hand of God as seen in work of the Ripper.”

That mindset, both racist and fatal, helped bury the case. In 1888, London’s Jack the Ripper drew headlines and legends; 22 years later, Atlanta’s version disappeared. Why?

The answer is painfully simple: The victims were Black women. Poor. Domestic workers. Often unnamed in early reports. They didn’t matter enough to spark panic, pressure, or pursuit. Only when then-Mayor James G. Woodward began facing business backlash and concern about the city’s reputation did the investigations ramp up. 

Still, no suspect was ever convicted for the murders. 

That doesn’t change the reality that the victims bled on the streets we paved over. And they deserve to be named — all of them.

No one truly knows if it was one man or many, one shadow or a collective storm. What is certain is that all of these women were taken, and all were caught in the same silence — overlooked, unnamed, invisible.

There are no brass statues for them. No crosswalk murals. No city-sponsored vigils. But they walked here, just as we walk now. They laughed in rooms we now renovate. They bled on the streets we paved over. And they deserve to be named — all of them.

So walk with me.

Walk with me to Hill Street, near the Atlanta and West Point Railroad tracks, where Maggie Brook fell. Just 23 years old. She was a cook, a woman who likely walked the tracks home thinking of her next shift, her next meal, her next breath.

Now we turn to Gardner Street, in the Pittsburgh neighborhood, near the Southern Railroad. Here, Rosa Trice, 35, a laundress, was found with her skull crushed, her throat cut. She was just 75 yards from home.

Continue onward to Garibaldi Street. There, behind her own house at No. 228, they found Mary Walker. She had left her job as a cook at 191 Cooper St. Her throat was cut in a jagged line. Her death silent, unavenged.

Breathe in the air at Krog Street and DeKalb Avenue. The intersection is now decorated with million-dollar town houses and boutiques. But it was here, in the shrubs, that Addie Watts was hidden after being struck with a brick, then a train coupling pin. Her throat was slit. She was a 22-year-old laundress.

Onward to Hanover Street, near the Seaboard Railroad. Lena Sharp, a seamstress, went out to the market. Her daughter Emma Lou searched for her and was stabbed. She survived the attack to speak of a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Her mother never came home.

Then we come to Atlanta Avenue, near Martin Street in Summerhill. Sewer lines ran here. So did blood. Sadie Holley’s body was found in a gully, a stone near her head. Her shoes were cut off. Her hair combs scattered like testimony.

Now to Stewart Street and the Atlanta Beltline, just beyond University Avenue. A ditch. Loose dirt. A woman’s heart cut out and laid beside her body. That was Mary Putnam, a housekeeper. Her body was still warm when found. Her stepson recognized her. He was afraid to say he knew Mary aloud, as he thought he might be arrested.

Stand with me now at 167 Martin St., back in Summerhill. A woman named Georgia Brown, a cook, lived and died here. She was shot. Her life was reduced to a name in a newspaper column.

Walk over to 122 Randolph St. Rosa L. Rivers, too, was shot. And like Georgia, her name faded quickly from public memory.

Turn now toward Rockwell and Elizabeth streets. This is where Eva Florence was found. Her head beaten, her neck stabbed. Her brother posted a reward, and cried out into the silence.

Stop at West Fair and Chestnut streets. That’s where they found Pearl Williams, throat slashed. She lived at 338 West Fair. 

Move gently now, down Connally Street, near Georgia Avenue. The field still remembers Minnie Wise. A rock to the head. A cut to the throat. Her story, also forgotten.

Standing still now, at 92 Spencer St. in Vine City. The former home of Lucinda McNeal. Her story ended in tragedy — her husband convicted of her murder after being chased down by witnesses, sentenced to life. But even then, the certainty of guilt was shadowed by doubt. In an era where justice bent too easily to fear and prejudice, one must ask: were these convictions the truth or merely convenient?

The legal system of the time often sought closure, not clarity. Black men, in particular, became targets of a system eager to calm public panic, not uncover the facts. These patterns would repeat decades later, in the haunting legacy of the Atlanta Missing and Murdered Children, where bias once again blurred the truth and left families with questions no sentence could satisfy.

Ida Ferguson. Alacy Owens. They, too, had partners accused and imprisoned. Men ensnared by circumstantial evidence. Their cases, like so many others, are punctuated by a verdict, not understanding. These women, wives, daughters, mothers deserve more than passing mentions in trial transcripts. They deserve remembrance. They deserve the chance to be seen as part of something larger: the tide of violence that gripped this city, the silence that followed too quickly.

That silence was heavily weighted with names that once rang through neighborhoods in fear and mourning. On April 5, 1909, Della Reid was found dead in a trash heap near 71 Rankin St. Less than a year later, on March 5, 1910, Estella Baldwin suffered a fatal concussion of the brain inside her home at 735 N. Jackson St. May brought more loss: Luvinia Ostin, killed by a gunshot wound on May 6, followed closely by Sarah Dukes, gunned down on May 23 at 119 Curran St. Francis Lampkin met a similar fate at 407 Foundry St., and on Sept. 4, 1910, Eliza Griggs was found with a gunshot wound at 28 Dover St.

Now, we continue walking, without names.

An alley near Atlanta Avenue and Fraser Street — they found a woman there. She had been stabbed. No one ever came to name her.  

Along the Chattahoochee River, near the Chattahoochee Brick Co., a girl floated, throat slashed, a key tied to a string around her neck. Her age was estimated to be 15.

And in the woods, just past the West Point belt car line — beer bottles scattered near her crushed head — another woman. Also unnamed. Also lost.

Twenty-four women. Each street, an unmarked grave.

We remember them not because a report says they were definitively linked. We remember them because they are linked by something deeper — by the way the world turned away. By the way the city watched the killing of Black women become background noise.

To say their names is to challenge forgetting. To walk their routes is to reclaim sacred ground. And yes, this ground is sacred. Because blood consecrates. Because memory resurrects.

Atlanta, do you hear them?

Do you see where they fell?

Do you know what it means to walk in a city paved over the bones of forgotten women?

This isn’t about the Ripper. It’s about Black women.

Because to remember is a form of justice. 

We remember them. We name them. We carry them.

Because these women were here.