THOMASVILLE — Two black Thomasville businessmen, both Thomasville natives, recall the Civil Rights Movement.

“I was young, but I sat at the coattails of Curtis Thomas, Hubert Thomas and Ben Corbett,” 66-year-old Nathaniel H. Abrams Jr. said.

Abrams said he listened and ultimately provided advice and viewpoints “from a younger person.”

“The advice was to be sure we took in all viewpoints. Unless we consider views of others, you don’t get the full picture,” he said.

Ben Hatcher, 75, was living in Detroit, when the Civil Rights Movement began. After completing embalming school, he was working to further his training in Detroit.

“I didn’t come back here until the mid-’60s. They were in the heat of it then,” Hatcher said, in reference to the Civil Right Movement in Thomasville.

He recalled local leaders of the movement such as Curtis Thomas, the Rev. Dr. I.L. Mullins, Bill Morris, Elijah Hill and Rudolph Elzy.

“It was very peaceful. We didn’t have violence,” Hatcher said. “The group in Thomasville worked together to get integration going in a peaceful manner.”

He said a bi-racial committee worked to bring about peaceful integration. Abrams graduated from Thomasville High School in 1969. One year before Thomasville City schools integrated. 

Abrams said people often live in silos rather than communities.

“When we live in silos, we tend not to think about other people’s perspectives,” he said.

Hatcher said Thomasville had black elected officials before many towns. 

He was elected at-large, before district voting, and served 16 years on Thomasville City Council. Thomasville Police Department hired the agency’s first two black police officers in the mid-1950s — before other Southwest Georgia cities, Hatcher said. 

Some cities sent potential black police officers to Thomasville to be trained by TPD’s black officers.

Hatcher, who opened Hatcher-Peoples Funeral Home in 1966, said challenges facing communities to improve race relations could be answered by young people getting an education, so they can fit into the community.

“People my age, we worked hard to accomplish things. We worked to make the community a better place for all citizens,” Hatcher said.

Employment and honest communications would help improve race relations, Abrams said.

“I think those would be starting points,” he said.

In the SunLight Project’s coverage area — Dalton, Tifton, Moultrie, Milledgeville, Thomasville and Valdosta, Ga., along with Live Oak, Jasper and Mayo, Fla., and the surrounding counties — the Civil Rights Movement has impacted every community and continues to influence black leaders.

The SunLight Team spoke with black leaders in cities and communities throughout South Georgia and North Florida to see how the Civil Rights Movement lives on.

Dexter Sharper of Valdosta, Georgia state representative for District 177, said the sacrifices made by the people who participated in the Civil Rights Movement made it possible for him to be where he is today. Without their sacrifices, there would still be a terrible imbalance between the races.

“They didn’t do those things, those sacrifices, for themselves,” Sharper said. “It wasn’t just for them. It was for the generations that come after you. I appreciate those who fought for my rights, and it wasn’t just African-Americans. There were many brave Caucasians who fought for me, too.”

Following the example of the Civil Rights Movement, Sharper said he learned to be selfless.

As a state representative, he said he fights for the people whose voices are marginalized. For example, Sharper said he feels a sense of responsibility to help the many people in Georgia who don’t have access to health insurance.

“I have insurance, so I’m fighting for the 500,000 Georgians who should have the opportunity to take better care of themselves,” he said.

Sharper said he is an example of the strides that have been made since the Civil Rights Movement. There are more black representatives in government than ever before, and he thanks the movement for that. He became a representative for the Valdosta area in 2012. Until that moment, he said, there had never been a black state representative for the area.

“That’s a long time for that many African-Americans to go without someone representing them,” Sharper said.

Having that representation is important for a couple of reasons, he said. One, the people have someone who can relate to them. In order for a representative to know what the people want, they have to be one of the people, he said.

“Secondly, it gives younger generations the hope and drive that they can also serve,” Sharper said.

Despite these strides and sacrifices, tension between whites and blacks are ever present.

Sharper said segregation is still a problem, albeit less outright than during the Civil Rights Movement. There are no more “Whites Only” bathrooms and black people aren’t forced to sit in the back of the bus, but white and black people are still segregated by economic means, by the churches and schools they attend and even by the sports they play.

“Financial barriers make improving these relationships nearly impossible,” Sharper said. “There has to be better job opportunities, education and financing in African-American neighborhoods. There’s a lot that has to be done.”

He said black people are born in bad areas of town with little hope of escape. Grouping people up into project housing makes it harder for people to have a better future and perpetuates a vicious cycle that isn’t good for anyone in a community, he said.

“There needs to be compassion, love,” Sharper said. “People are stuck in their ways, believing in stereotypes and afraid to reach out. Everyone needs to realize that we’re in this together.”

Perhaps the most apparent tensions throughout every community is between law enforcement and the black community.

Sharper said he personally sees tensions from both sides, but he does see a glimmer of hope. He has noticed the younger generation has less of a bias than previous generations.

“The millennials seem more relaxed than the baby boomers,” Sharper said. “I’ve noticed there isn’t the obvious high tension of racism with them.”

In Dalton, the police force has made few strides in reaching out to the black community and hiring black officers. 

The Dalton City Council recently named Police Chief Jason Parker the new city administrator.

In announcing the search for the next police chief to replace Parker, members of the city’s Public Safety Commission at first said they would accept applications only from within the department. Given that all of the department’s executive, command and supervisor positions are filled by white men, that virtually guaranteed the PSC would consider no women or minorities for the job.

Whites make up less than half of Dalton’s population, and the PSC’s decision drew immediate fire from many sectors of the community.

Antoine Simmons, president of the Dalton-Whitfield National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the PSC was “displaying the all too familiar behavior that seems to have us locked in a time capsule drifting backwards.”

The PSC relented and said it will accept applications from outside the department.

Talk to some of Dalton’s older black residents and they’ll say the city’s police department once included several black officers. And they’ll note with disappointment that it no longer has any, even as the city’s minority population has surged.

“I do share that concern and disappointment,” Simmons said.

According to data supplied by the department, of the Dalton Police Department’s 82 sworn officers, only four are Hispanic and none are black.

Dalton’s population is 40.3 percent white, 47.9 percent Hispanic and 8 percent black.

“There are different reasons why (the number of minority officers has declined),” Simmons said. “The interest level in serving in law enforcement may not be there for minority populations like there was in the 1970s. 

“But I also don’t think you have people in leadership who are reaching out and recruiting minorities, not in a sustained and intentional way. There has been a slow chipping away in what was known as affirmative action. It’s not as important anymore.

“Personally, I feel it is still important, because we are seeing a withering away of minority applicants and minorities in leadership roles,” Simmons said.

Tyree Goodlett was the first black person elected to the Dalton City Council in 2015. Local law-enforcement leaders said it is difficult for departments outside metro areas to recruit minority candidates. 

Goodlett said there may be a reason for that.

“When you talk to a lot of young black persons or young Hispanic persons, and my wife is Hispanic, they don’t just say, ‘I want to be a police officer,’ or ‘I want to be a firefighter.’ They say, ‘I want to be a police chief one day,’ or ‘I want to work my way up,'” Goodlett said. 

Goodlett said black and Hispanic people are going to apply at police departments where they see more than just white people in management roles.

“That’s where they are going to go, a lot of them,” he said. “And they aren’t going to go where they don’t see that.”

Simmons said it is important for law enforcement to include officers that look like the community.

“The law is the law. But fair can be subjective, and if you do not have someone who can relate to you culturally, ethnically, whatever, what is fair to you in a certain situation may not be fair to you in another situation,” he said.

Dalton isn’t the only police force in the SunLight Coverage area that has had its race problems through the years.

A man of service, John Yulee, of Live Oak, Fla., vividly recalls the time he wasn’t allowed to serve.

In 1990, Yulee ran in an election for the Live Oak police chief position.

“I was the first black person to run for chief of police in Live Oak,” Yulee said. “I won the election, but the council denied me to serve.”

He said the Live Oak City Council at the time did not want to see him as chief of police, so it disbanded the police department.

According to previous Suwannee Democrat articles, Yulee was elected Live Oak police chief in May 1990. However, voters, by way of the same ballot, voted to abolish the police chief position.

In February 1990, City Council signed an agreement to cease the operation of the Live Oak Police Department and have the Suwannee County Sheriff’s Office provide law-enforcement services for the city of Live Oak.

“The citizens abolished the elected police chief position, not the council,” said Mayor Sonny Nobles, who was on the council at the time.

Yulee said he was heartbroken.

But he ran for the District 1 city councilman position several years later and won and has now served on the board for 16 years. He said he ran in part because the council denied him the chance to serve as police chief. It also allowed him to continue serving the public.

“I always serve the people,” Yulee said. “I served the people as a mailman. I served the people in the military.”

Yulee and his six siblings were raised by his mother in Live Oak. He graduated from Douglass High School in 1968 and entered the Army two weeks later.

“I never went to an integrated school,” Yulee said.

Integration started after he joined the military.

“It was a new thing to me because it was the first time I went through integration,” Yulee said.

He said he also wanted to serve the people. Serving others was instilled in him growing up.

“As long as I am able to work, I want to stay busy serving the people of my community,” Yulee said.

Yulee was recognized as a community leader at the 22nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations Jan. 13. 

He said there was a lot of racism when he was growing up, but it has changed. America still has some growth needed, but if they follow the path they are on, it will be better, he said.

America has come a long way since 1861, when the leaders of Southern states voted to secede from the Union and form the Confederacy. 

Today, Milledgeville holds a complicated place in the history of civil rights. 

The city’s former status as Georgia’s state capitol inextricably ties it to the history of slavery and oppression. Despite that, modern-day residents of Milledgeville have witnessed it grow into the modern age.

“Obviously, there have been a number of changes for people of color and especially African-Americans since the Civil Rights Movement,” said Floyd Griffin, former state senator, Milledgeville mayor and Army colonel. “We can do a lot of things that we could not do during the ’60s and before, like going to any restaurant, sitting on buses wherever we want to sit and freedom of speech. We have more elected officials at the local, state and national level, so we’ve seen a tremendous change from (those) standpoint(s).”

Griffin said minorities have made great strides in America in terms of equality from the time of his youth until now, but multiple problems and disparities between ethnicities persist to this day.

“Looking at where we are and where we need to go, however, we need to continue to work on those gains, because we are definitely not where we should be from an economic standpoint,” he said. “Our education system is not equal at the public school level, and there’s a lot of work to be done there.

“It seems like over the last 12 to 24 months, this country has become more divisive due to the current administration and the things that the President is doing.

“We’re going backwards instead of going forward,” Griffin said. “Just to give you an example, a new board of directors have been appointed at the Navicent Hospital here in Milledgeville, and there is not one African-American named to that board at this time.”

Such incidents make people of color question where the country is and why these kinds of things are still being done, he said.

Another longtime Milledgeville resident is Beverly Calhoun, Griffin’s longtime friend and collaborator. A resident of Milledgdville since 1968, when she moved here as a 2-year-old. Since, Calhoun has joined Griffin in witnessing a marked change.

Although the retired local resident has witnessed the challenges of winning civil rights one piece at a time, Calhoun is convinced the disparities between races will one day be eliminated.

“The struggle today is based on some of the same things that we dealt with during the Civil Rights era,” Calhoun said. “Even though we’re still experiencing problems such as housing discrimination, higher rates of unemployment and women trying to break through the glass ceiling in terms of equal wages, I’m not pessimistic. I believe in a higher power, and I believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The hallmark of the Civil Rights Movement was civil disobedience. 

Black men and women peacefully being where the law told them they weren’t allowed to be, whether it was drinking from water fountains, using bathrooms, eating in restaurants and sitting on buses. It was passive resilience that the country couldn’t ignore.

During the height of his career, Valdosta lawyer Roy Copeland was anything but passive.

“I sued the city a number of times back in the ’80s,” Copeland said. “There were a lot of people that hated my guts, but I don’t like it when I see someone being treated unfairly.”

Now, it’s been a while since he sued the city, but hanging on the wall in his office is a collection of newspaper clippings from the time he held the city responsible for discriminatory promotional tests at the police department. He said that under this scheme, no officers of color had ever been promoted.

The Civil Rights Movement instilled in him a strong sense of community responsibility. He said Martin Luther King Jr.’s quest for equality left an indelible mark on him.

“How can you live in a country, such as ours, that is free, open and democratic, and not treat people equally?” Copeland said. “It’s a contradiction. When people treat others differently because of their economic status, ethnicity, religion or their national origin, it’s antithetical to everything this country represents.”

Copeland, a past president of the Valdosta chapter of 100 Black Men, said anyone who isn’t contributing to the cause of civil rights and equality is doing a disservice to the community.

One of his major contributions, he said, came in the mid-1980s when he sued to shut off the City of Valdosta’s federal funding.

“People were livid,” Copeland said. “But when negotiating, you want to negotiate from a position of power. This made the front page of the newspaper. It got people’s attention, and negotiations got serious after that. They had to take us seriously.”

The case started after multiple black police officers came to Copeland and his law firm about being passed over for promotion because of discriminatory assessment tests. He didn’t immediately attack the city’s funding. He worked his way through the federal bureaucracy, but failed to make the progress he wanted.

That’s when he decided to apply more pressure on the city.

“We decided, let’s ask the court to cut off their funding,” Copeland said. “For everyone, I was after literally everything. Go for the jugular, right?”

To no one’s surprise, negotiations got serious and Copeland prevailed. They got the rules for promotion changed, he said.

“The law is a powerful weapon,” Copeland said.

The Civil Rights Movement fought discrimination and racism in restaurants, buses and in the streets. It paved the way for lawyers such as Copeland to fight the system through the system.

“In most cases, marches are ahead of the law,” Copeland said. “Sometimes the law is too slow. For example, for gay rights, the law lagged for years, but it’s caught up now.”

He said he and everyone else fighting for equality do so on the shoulders of those who came before them.

“People had to suffer immensely for me to be where I am today,” Copeland said. “That’s also really important for young people to know.”

In the SunLight Project’s coverage area — Dalton, Tifton, Moultrie, Milledgeville, Thomasville and Valdosta, Ga., along with Live Oak, Jasper and Mayo, Fla., and the surrounding counties — black leaders agree that while America has progressed significantly in civil rights and race relations, the nation still has a long way to go in reaching the standard of equality for all.

Willie Frank Wilson, director of the Albany Civil Rights Institute, said one area where black history should be used instructively is in the voting arena.

The Moultrie native, who taught in segregated schools, said since black slaves were shipped to America full participation in the electoral process was denied to them until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The importance of the right to vote, and the sacrifices made to secure it, shouldn’t be forgotten, Wilson said.

Leaders should make the case that voting is vital. That voting includes local elections for city and county government as well as state elections.

Having an African-American on the presidential ballot excited people in 2008 and 2012, Wilson said, but every election is important. That’s because local governmental entities can have a direct impact on people’s lives, and state government officials make appointments to boards and commissions that also affect them, he said.

Many people don’t seem to make that connection.

“They see a lot more value in standing in a lottery line than they do in a voting line,” Wilson said. “A lot of other people don’t see value in voting in a race that doesn’t involve a presidential race. People just don’t get excited for local races. A lot of people don’t see their vote is going to make a difference.”

Voter registration, education and participation should be encouraged, Wilson said.

“I think those of us who do see value in voting don’t make enough effort to educate people,” he said. “I think we need to do a better job to educate folks.”

This includes not just focusing on who is running, but looking into what the issues are and what is at stake in the lower-ballot contests.

Wilson said it took a specific amendment for black people to vote.

The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Not only that, but the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed such things as poll taxes and literacy tests that were used mostly to prevent black people from voting.

“That’s one of the things that we don’t take seriously enough,” he said. “I think if people understood what it took to get the right to vote, people would take it more seriously.”

This is the second part of a two part series. The first part was published Sunday, Feb. 4.

The SunLight Project team of journalists who contributed to this report includes Thomas Lynn, Charles Oliver, Eve Guevara, Kevin Hall, Jessie Box, Will Woolever and Patti Dozier. Editors are Jim Zachary and Dean Poling. To contact the team, email sunlightproject@gaflnews.com.

Thomas Lynn is a government and education reporter for The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be reached at (229)244-3400 ext. 1256