Approximately 85 people gathered on Lanier County property Sunday night to hear words of poetry. Instead, they endured words of hate and bigotry.

The evening’s spoken-word poetry performances on private property along the Alapaha River were reportedly interrupted by the arrival of four or five four-wheelers about a hundred yards away on the other side of the river.

The young men on the four-wheelers yelled a series of curse words, insults and racial slurs at the group gathered for the poetry reading. The poetry group was composed of white and black people, though predominantly African-American. The group never saw the riders’ faces.

Stephen Gill, a member of Poetic Magic, has been organizing these outdoor, evening poetry sessions for the past eight months. The past meetings have been peaceful with no disturbances or interruptions.

Gill, Greg Murray, John Robinson, George Rhynes, Richell Williams, Tony Grier, and Latoya Watts met with The Valdosta Daily Times Thursday to discuss the incident.

The poetry group has been granted permission to meet on Lanier County land owned by a white man who is Gill’s friend and co-worker. Gill did not share the property owner’s name to respect his privacy. The property owner has attended past gatherings. He was not present Sunday when the four-wheelers arrived, though he brought the group firewood earlier in the evening.

The land is by the Alapaha River and near an old slave cemetery.

“Being there means we are close to the spirits of our ancestors,” says Gill, with the area serving as a cultural touchstone to the evening’s poetry.

Sunday’s session started about 6 p.m. About 30 minutes into the performances, the four-wheelers arrived on the other side of the river. Robinson was preparing to sing a song and recite poetry when the riders repeatedly began yelling the N-word.

The poetry group did not respond with threats or cursing, Robinson and Gill say. Instead, the poetry group lifted their voices in song. The more the riders yelled and revved their four-wheelers’ engines, the louder the poetry group sang. This lasted about 30 minutes.

Several in the poetry group left during the noisy standoff. Many stayed.

One of the people who left was Richell Williams, a Poetic Magic poet who uses the name Phoenix. She had brought a young man from Hudson Dockett to the poetry session. The incident on the river made the young man uncomfortable, Williams says. He likely will not return, even though the poetry disturbance occurred the same evening as nearly a dozen people were shot at Hudson Dockett.

“This was an opportunity to reach this young man, to save him from violence through poetry, and now that opportunity may be lost,” Williams says.

Several in the poetry audience were Valdosta State University students, young people new to South Georgia and unfamiliar with the hostility of open bigotry, Robinson says.

“You hate to hear these things. You hate that young people today have to experience these things, but I’m glad they know, too. That they’ve learned that this type of ignorance is still out there,” says Robinson, adding he has fought racism and discrimination for decades.