| By Sonam Vashi | Four days before Christmas in 1957, on a Saturday morning, Clarence Horatious Pickett, a preacher and advertising salesman in Columbus, Georgia, walked into town to pick up his paycheck. About 42 years old and known as “Reverend” to many, the tall,
| By Isabel Hughes, Ross Merlin and Nitin Aradhya | On Sunday, December 22, 1957, residents of the bustling West Georgia city of Columbus were busy with holiday preparations. But not Clarence Pickett. “Baby, I am dying,” he told his friend Bessie Smith. “I feel like every breath
Hosie Miller, a farmer in Baker County, was shot in the back by a neighboring farmer, Cal Hall, Jr. Some of Hall's cows had wandered onto Miller's property. According to the results of an FBI investigation, Hall tried to take one of Miller's cows and
On the morning of December 5, 1956, B.T. Dukes, a 71-year-old white retired farmer from Molena, Georgia, a small farming town sixty miles south of Atlanta, drove to Maybelle Mahone’s house, two miles outside of Molena.
| By Taylor Madgett | “They Done Killed A.C.”: The Death of Justice in Macon On October 13, 1962, at around 9:30 p.m., seventeen-year-old A.C. Hall left the Middle Georgia Veterans Club in Macon, GA, with his friend Eloise Franklin and began walking to their homes. They stopped in the
On July 11, 1964, nine days after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act, Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn and two friends – all World War II veterans -- wrapped up their Army Reserve camp at Ft. Benning and decided to drive
Weeks of tension between police and residents of the Perry Homes housing project in northwest Atlanta peaked on September 13, 1958, when several hundred residents protested police handling of a suspect. By the time the confrontation was over, Officer W.O. Dempsey had shot Joseph H.
| By Erica Sterling | A Man whose Death Inspired the Teenager who Led the Movement Maceo Snipes must have felt a great sense of pride after he cast his first vote in the contentious 1946 Democratic primary for governor. Like many black World War II veterans,
Dr. Thomas H. Brewer was Columbus's most prominent civil rights activist and the founder of the city's NAACP chapter. He was instrumental in supporting Primus King in the King v. Chapman litigation that led federal courts to strike down Georgia's all-white primary. He was also
| By Mary Claire Kelly | Little more than a month after he brutally and fatally beat James Brazier, Police Officer Weyman Burchle Cherry was still on duty, patrolling the black neighborhoods during the night shift in Dawson, Terrell County. At about 1:30 a.m. on May
