ATLANTA (AP) — Even now, the sound of a drum can carry Lori Morton back to Macon and a night of terror at Wesleyan College more than two decades ago.

With a bass drum pounding a steady beat, young women in hooded robes and face paint — and nooses around their necks — rounded up her and other first-year students. Morton, an African American, was two weeks into her freshman year. She had no prior warning about what was coming that fall night in 1991 as she and other students, some black, some white, huddled in the darkness. Suddenly, a figure in a purple robe rode up on horseback.

"I remember be...