MARIETTA, Georgia — During a recent presentation, Railfanning.org Publisher and Editor Todd DeFeo highlighted the long-lost names of some of those killed in Georgia’s deadliest rail disaster.
On Aug. 4, 1944, an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad train disaster in south Georgia claimed the lives of 47 people, primarily black laborers returning home to Alabama for the weekend.
“What struck me most when looking into this wreck is the fact that so many accounts didn’t include the names of those who were killed,” DeFeo said during a presentation of “Death on the Southern Rails” at the Cobb County Library in Marietta.
“Maybe it’s because [of] who they were. [The media] didn’t want to report on them. And I’ve looked through a lot of newspaper accounts; I was actually able to find a couple lists — that were incomplete — but I wanted to just take a moment and at least list those victims of that wreck who I was able to identify.
“I thought that was important to put up just for a moment, so we can at least perhaps remember them for a moment,” DeFeo added. “And even to this day, this is actually the deadliest train wreck in Georgia history, with 47 people [killed].”
