“It’s impossible to lie when the truth is carved in stone.”
--African Proverb
Harold Michael Harvey, begins his book with a chapter called "Power Balls," which immediately takes readers into a time period when , although Black Men were now allowed to vote, the wording by white leaders actually prevented any of those voting to run for office and actually vote for their peer group(s) in various parts of Georgia. This book dives in deep regarding actions that took place in Macon, GA.
Listening to this can help all of US--no matter what race
I've always found peace in Black Gospel songs... I used to play/sing on a local Black Minister, Rev. Joe Jordan's TV program in Morgantown, WV...A wonderful memory
!
Because I was able to start reading Fantasy Five by the time that Black History Month had begun, I talked with the author and received his permission to handle my involvement with his latest book in any way I wanted... So, in order to not only get the word out, I thought I could take a more indepth look at the evolution of voting and holding public policy issues that became political traps by which white citizens there chose to use various methods, including, one outright theft, to prevent one individual to be able to feel like a fair election took place... I will do a chapter at a time and spread it across the month, filling in other books for which I have also made commitments to review...
One of the curious actions for me was that, once given the right to hold office, it became a tragedy, in my opinion, that some black men would do anything to gain the power of holding office, as opposed to allowing the best Black man to be able to run and, hopefully, be accepted by white voters in the area. After having seen so much within the white race, I guess I was disappointed that this type of avarice appears to be in all races. But, of course, that was based upon my background and the few Black people I have known in my life, most of them authors, some of them becoming good friends... Still, it has always appeared to me that Black families are closer than many white people, perhaps because of all of the prejudice bestowed through thousands of years by, supposedly, their white brothers?
“When the roots are deep, there is no need to fear the wind.” --African Proverb
“…It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come; yes, it will.” Sam Cook - A Change Is Gonna Come
Ladies and Gentlemen, Just how long must our Black Neighbors be forced to fight for every single step toward advancement without white people working to prevent recognition of those individuals who were once enslaved and used by white farmers who were not only beaten, forced to work long hours, being sold to other owners who needed a slave, which resulted in a split-up of families, and, from my point of view, have Black women raped by White owners--any time they wanted to! But that was just the ugly beginning of the lives of Black people who had been brought to America, and who were treated as property, as opposed to their being treated as every single person who was created in God's image, should be treated!
You will see that I've included some info comparatively related to the present... just as the study of history will/must(?) affect the future...
.webp)
While nearly fifty percent of the delegates to the 1868 State Constitutional Convention were of African descent, the majority of delegates were White Southerners who wanted back into the United States but under their terms. To maintain the pre-Civil War status quo, White Georgians knew that if they could not prevent Blacks from voting, at the very least, Blacks should not have an absolute right to hold public office.
The method used by the “White Power” structure in Georgia to prevent Blacks from holding public office was by causing the apportionment process to draw district lines that contained a majority of Whites. This form of apportioning district lines for representational purposes is known as gerrymandering. This practice is as old as the United States of America. Today, this practice divides states, counties, and municipalities by political parties.
Gerrymandering by party has become so pervasive that it caused a young African man running for a seat in Illinois State to tell delegates at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that we were not the Red States or the Blue States but the United States of America.
Thus, Black people could vote for representatives in the executive branch, the legislature, and for city and county government. Still, as a bloc of votes, Blacks, without a significant number of White voters, could not elect a Black person to public office. A Catch-22 that one hundred and fifty-five years after the 1868 State Constitutional Convention caused State Senator David E. Lucas to posit, “For a Black person to win an election, you had to get White votes, and you could not get White votes.”
This unspoken agreement ruled the day for 106 years in Macon, Georgia, until members of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored (NAACP) filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against the Georgia General Assembly challenging the at-large voting district process. The suit alleged that with these documented voting patterns, it was impossible to elect qualified Blacks to public office. A district system should carve out a set number of districts with a significant Black population to ensure that Black voters could elect people who looked like them for public service.
The NAACP prevailed in this suit, and the federal court ordered the Georgia General Assembly to dissolve militia district 89, containing six post districts that required district-wide voting. However, a candidate declared which of the six posts he wanted to represent, and all voters in the 89th District had a vote in each post. The court order required Georgia to create four districts out of the six posts in the old 89th District. They were Districts 99, 100, 101, and 102.
Of those four new State House Districts, Black voters held a population majority in Districts 101 and 102.
When the federal court decision came, Macon’s second-ever Black attorney, Tom Jackson, announced to a few friends that he planned to seek the District 101 seat. Jackson grew up and received educational instructions in Boston, Massachusetts. He migrated to Macon in 1959 after marrying a young lady from Macon. Tall, slim, and tanned, Jackson was a suave dresser and spoke with a slight stutter and a Boston accent. A Howard University Law School grad, Jackson played tennis at the Tatnall Square tennis courts on Sunday afternoons, which in the 1970s was quite the thing for upwardly mobile Blacks to do. The Tatnall Square Sunday afternoon tennis matches brought out Macon’s Black tennis enthusiasts and a host of looky-loos watching the middle class enjoying life in a park and on tennis courts that a few years before were off-limits to them.
Jackson represented the Bivens family in a 1963 lawsuit that led to the desegregation of the public secondary schools in Macon. This writer benefited from that lawsuit, integrating the Lanier Junior High School for Boys in September 1965. When the District 101 seat became available, Jackson still represented plaintiffs in this desegregation case.
In early 1970, Jackson hired William C. “Billy” Randall, a 27-year-old Emory Law School graduate, to assist him in his practice. Randall, the son of political kingpin Bill Randall, grew up in Macon’s Pleasant Hill community and played baseball during the summer at Grace Hill Park. He attended Morgan State College (University) undergraduate school and graduated from the Emory University Law School.
According to Jackson in a 1976 interview with this writer, shortly before the deadline to qualify for the new District 101 State House seat, Jackson announced privately to close personal and political friends his plans to seek the District 101 post once the federal courts ordered the drawing of district lines. When the decision came down, Jackson contends, Randall left his law practice, taking files that Jackson thought “were the property of the Jackson law firm.”
Then, in May of 1974, before Jackson publicly announced his candidacy, Randall announced that he would seek the newly created legislative seat.
In this 1976 interview, Jackson stated he was floored and felt betrayed by Randall’s announcement. He said that he thought it was a “Judas effect” because he had given Randall a job when he came home from law school and mentored him in the early stages of his legal career.
Jackson was acutely aware of the bad blood spilled to keep Henry McNeal Turner from representing Bibb County in the General Assembly a century before the creation of the 101st District. He sought to avoid a nasty fight in the Black community over the election of the first Black State Representative since Turner.
He tossed the idea repeatedly in his head and in discussions with his close political allies. Perhaps he should not have planned to run - a thought - that took up much of the space in his head. But the thing that nagged at Jackson was the tactic Randall used to usurp his plans to run. Jackson stated he felt that a person who would pull an underhanded trick to be the first to announce lacked the essential character to represent Black people in state government.
The character issue ruled the day, so on the deadline to qualify for this seat, Jackson drove to Atlanta and paid the qualifying fee to oppose his former law associate in a run for the District 101 seat.
The fireworks were beginning. The contest, as Jackson feared, split the Black community into pieces. For over a decade, Jackson’s suave sophistication set a high standard in the Black community. He quickly earned the support of the professional Black middle class.
With the political battle lines drawn, Randall, like Jackson, had found his tribe. Randall was the people’s candidate, and Jackson was the middle-class candidate. From the “Cotton Avenue Mafia” to the Pio Nono Avenue Beer House card players, the political pundits held intense conversations over whether Jackson or Randall best represented Black folks in Atlanta.
With superior name recognition, Randall had his share of middle-class voters. While this writer was working as a substitute teacher at Eugenia Hamilton Elementary School, the school’s principal, Bill Barnes, a member of the “Cotton Avenue Mafia,” came into the classroom to encourage the teacher to cast his ballot for Randall. The principal’s request intimidated the substitute teacher, who never substituted at that school again after notifying Barnes that he volunteered for the Jackson campaign and planned to vote for him.
Jackson’s campaign took issue with Mayor Ronnie Thompson’s 1968 “shoot to kill” edict to police, offering to work to lower crime by improving the educational and prison rehabilitation systems. Randall, in the spirit of his daddy, pledged to represent both the Black and White community. Randall told George Doss, Macon News Staff Writer, “…what is good for one race is good for the other race, and what is bad for one race is bad for the other race” (The Macon Telegraph, Sunday, August 11, 1974, p. 6).
During the campaign, Randall, in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the 40 percent of White voters in House District 101, issued a statement alleging that Jackson had received support in cash and catfish from John McGown. Randall knew the controversial catfish farmer and political boss established in Hancock County, Georgia, by the Ford Foundation did not sit well with White people in Middle Georgia.
McGown, a strong, unapologetic Black man, before an unapologetic Black man was a catchphrase, was feared by Whites because he organized the majority Black population in Hancock County and took over political control of the county. The McGown group kicked every White office holder to the curb, just what every White man attending the 1868 Georgia Constitutional Convention had feared. McGown was the worst nightmare of every member of the White Power Structure: a Black man with political and economic power. And, while in their heart, every Black man was proud of McGown’s accomplishments in rural Hancock County, Georgia, none of the so-called elite Black leadership wanted alignment with him publicly.
McGown built his economic wealth on the strength of a successful catfish farm. In the early 1970s, practically no one farmed fish. The McGown operation in East Georgia proved that fish, like cows, pigs, and chickens, could be raised on a farm without sticking a pole into a pond to enjoy traditional bottom feeders, without the unhealthy foods these pond or lake catfish ate.
Based on 2022 data, over half of the fish consumed is raised on a fish farm and not caught in the wild. McGown was a forerunner in the husbandry of fish. Today, fifty years later, McGown’s fish ponds lay in ruins, his antebellum home rotting by the day, and the Black power he ushered into the Hancock County lexicon, all but forgotten, reduced to infighting among Black elected officials.
Jackson said this allegation was “…a lie, calculated to hurt me.” Was it calculated to hurt Jackson, and with whom?
Randall's ploy was undoubtedly calculated to distance White people in District 101 from Jackson. Jackson had a sophisticated manner and spoke the King's English to perfection. He was relatable to white people. Randall did not leave anything or any vote to chance. He wanted to influence White voters away from District 101 or, at the very least, from Tom Jackson.
In my 1974 interview with Jackson following his 1972 dust-up with Billy Randall, he denied receiving any fish from John McGown.
An election mishap caused, perhaps, by the Bibb County Board’s malfeasance turned this hotly contested race into a powder keg when Randall squeaked out a 22-vote victory in the August 13, 1974 Democratic Primary. Several Jackson voters who voted at the National Guard Amory on Anthony Road alleged that the Jackson-Randall contest did not appear on their ballot.
After an investigation, Henry Dews, the Bibb County Election’s Superintendent, reported that about 100 voters in the Godfrey 3 Precinct voted on the wrong machine, which had the ballot for the uncontested District 102 race.
The Godrey 3 Precinct is what is known as a split precinct. A split precinct occurs when a portion of two or more districts vote at the same precinct. Based on the voter’s address and their legislative house district, the poll managers direct the voter to the appropriate voting machine. Randall won the Godfrey 3 Precinct 100 votes to 79 for Jackson.
Jackson challenged Randall’s 22-vote win on the allegation that some citizens in House District 101 did not receive the correct ballot. Also, Jackson contended that other irregularities took place that he would look into and that he would likely file a challenge regarding them later.
Randall countered that he felt Jackson’s contest of the election results was a case of “sour grapes.” Randall told The Macon Telegraph, “I would like to point out that if you threw Godfrey 3 out, I would still win by one vote” (The Macon Telegraph, Thursday, August 15, 1974).
For the first time in 102 years, Black people in Bibb County had an opportunity to send a State Representative to Atlanta; the primary election had ended after a hard-fought and bitter campaign as close as an election can end. In the days leading up to the court order requiring district lines in Bibb County, Black leaders hoped that the issue of who would run could resolve itself without a fight in the Black community.
Other potential candidates for the District 101 seat were content to allow Tom Jackson to run uncontested for the seat. His legal challenge to desegregate the public school system in Bibb County had earned him the right to represent Bibb County in the General Assembly.
Every other potential candidate conceded the seat to Jackson except Billy Randall. He felt his father’s civil rights leadership, which began in the early 1950s before Jackson came to town, had earned him the right to a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.
The war of words between the two camps continued into the fall. A Bibb County Superior Court Judge then threw out the primary votes of August 13, 1974, and ordered a special election. The election board set the new election for October 10, 1974.
“He is not a man that I would want to entrust a responsibility to,” Jackson told reporters following the primary results.
Randall received 1,037 votes in the special election to Jackson’s 813. Randall’s 224 votes fell within the margin where Jackson could have challenged the outcome and called for a recount. Instead, Jackson lamented at the Bibb County Board of Elections after the vote tally: “It takes a lot of good people to defeat a machine” (Christopher Bonner, Political Editor, The Macon Telegraph, October 11, 1974, p. 1).
Randall retorted, “He’s calling the people a machine.” Ibid.
But the people were not the machine that made Randall successful. Jackson was referring to the Robert W. Woodruff machine that had pledged to several Black law students at Emory University that he would do all he could to see their success. Randall was among a list which included Judges Clarence Cooper and Marvin Arrington,
Jackson decided not to contest the “Special Election” results to achieve harmony in the Black family. Billy Randall was going to Atlanta to join David Lucas as the first two Black people from Bibb County to have a seat in the general assembly since Henry McNeal Turner. Jackson never sought public office again.
Harvey begins his first chapter in the year 1975... And what do we find, after about 100 years, only then did Georgia and, I am sure, many other states, even begin to be willing to give some minimal level of acceptance that Black citizens had a right to both vote AND to hold office! But it was a fight all the way!
At the same time, after reading about the fight which began in the 1800s, once slavery had been abolished, it must beg the question, just how racist are the white people in Georgia...in the nation? For surely, race has continued to be an issue even into today's world... And, perhaps, surprisingly for many of us, race was used in the 2024 election under the guise of immigration, with the claim that all immigrants are dangerous people. It seems, even the ones that have been here for years and pay taxes, are under investigation. As an aside, I oppose the process used by America for running for federal office. It has become clearly a matter of influence as opposed to even having a basic review of qualifications of potential candidates. We have already seen it grow worse as totally unqualified people are being sworn in who lack even the basic experience by which they could hope to achieve any type of success in the demanding positions. Criminals are included and even the president has a criminal record...
In the 1975 race, it was clear to me that white people in every way possible were opposing any black representation in government. I maybe could have understood, a little, if this type of feeling had occurred right after the abolition of slavery when tempers were on edge for all involved people. To me, it should have changed within 20 years at best... Yet, it was in 1975! During my lifetime! That gerrymandering had to be accomplished in order to at least even up voting options... At the same time, NOW it is gerrymandering, which was created to solve a problem, is still being used, now to separate political parties! What is the difference I wonder... If we had candidates who were selected, first, based upon qualifications rather than any type of bias, in the primaries, then, by the time it moved forward, it "might" be able to become by popular vote... However, I have seen that bias exists for many people. Whether it is race, religion, or whatever separates people, it now flourishes in government, which is meant to "treat all people equally."
Jackson versus Randall was a no brainer for me. Randall had chosen to go around the back of his mentor and sign up for the very same district that Jackson had shared he planned to. Both were lawyers, so were minimally qualified I would assume. However, integrity of Randall was key for me... Randall had played dirty once, and probably would continue to into office. Yes, I know that this is getting into my opinions, but that is the reason I no longer accept reviews. I buy the books I want to read and also share my opinions on how books affect me... Probably 99% of the time that works to help an author. In any event, the political arena within today's world has indeed affected my scorn so comparative analysis seems appropriate for the historical book of what our Black folk have had to deal with their entire lives!
But Jackson continued to look toward some type of movement forward in his legal profession. But it was not until 1990 that he was appointed as a part-time judge of the Municipal. And even that was questioned even though the City Council now had black members. But, get this, the white power structure wouldn't give up! They created a new judge position, hired a white man and made his a senior position, forcing Jackson to report to another judge, both selected by the court, but one clearly be discriminated against! You know, folks, I fought every time somebody tried to screw this woman who had moved into a male-dominated work area of facilities/physical plant. When a woman is also white, the bias is covertly done, but still based upon bias... And, by the way, did you notice that Black men were allowed to vote before Black women? Same deal with white women... Check our Constitution... Those power-seekers are normally men--and in the case of race--it is mostly White men!
Next candidate up for office was David Lucas's historical run for the Georgia State General Assembly. The Black community hoped there would be no Jackson v Randall battle. Lucas had graduated from Tuskegee (see also review of Tuskegee Airmen) with a Political Science degree and was certainly qualified to enter into politics. I found it especially interesting that he won--because no "qualified" republican could be found! Now that's exactly what I was talking about above. NO individual should be running for government positions without documented qualifications for the position for which he is applying! Can I please hear an "Amen!" David Lucas is Still in that Seat, thankfully haven proven the Black politicians can succeed and continue to be elected.
It was Lucas who, as his first goal, was to work to change the present policy of "At Large" membership on the Macon City Council...
And that was just the beginning... to be continued...!
Personal Favorite..
GABixlerReviews
No comments:
Post a Comment