Tyrone Brooks oral history interview, August 3, 1994

Interviewed by Stephen Tuck. Among topics discussed: Growing up in Warrenton, Georgia; NAACP at Warrenton; students at Warrenton organize SCLC student branch; inactivity of older African Americans in civil rights movement; desegregation of Warren County schools; inspiration of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph David Abernathy; race relations in Warrenton compared to other parts of Georgia; statistics of Warrenton; influence of national television networks and print media in Warrenton; W. W. Law; U. S. Supreme Court and Brown v. Board of Education; reasons for integration of school systems; student boycotts and protests in Warrenton in 1960; picketing the Warren County Board of Education; SCLC staffers come to Warrenton; Carl Farris; Willie Bolden; Dorothy Cotton; advice of Farris in nonviolent protest; students involved in protests: Johnny Williams, Walter Hill, Carolyn Collier; black citizens in Warrenton active in movement: Odessa Wilburn, Julia May Storey; creation of Warren County SCLC; Brooks’s involvement in national movement; effects of Brown v. Board of Education in Atlanta; reasons for targeting the Warren County school system; desegregating the theater in Warrenton; unwillingness of parents to allow children to participate in movement; attempts at peaceful integration in Warren County; effective role of Carl Sanders as governor in integration; ineffective role of Ernest Vandiver as governor during civil rights era; Warrenton whites not opposed to integrating theater and lunch counters; Sanders’s decision to uphold Federal law; Voting Rights Act of 1965; registration of African Americans in Warren County to vote in 1964 presidential election; first blacks elected to county offices in Warren County in 1960s and 1970s; apathy of African Americans in Warren County in voting and running for office; Brooks leaving Warrenton to attend Howard University in Washintgon, D.C.; Brooks works in SCLC in Washington; influence of Hosea Williams on Brooks; Brooks returns to Georgia in 1967; Brooks accepts fulltime position with SCLC; SCLC work in Crawfordsville, Georgia; civil rights movement in Crawfordsville; beating of NBC reporter Charles Quinn and camera crew by Klansmen; Calvin Turner reports mistreatment of blacks in Crawfordsville; strength of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in rural parts of the states; KKK in Warrenton and militant African Americans; registration of blacks in Crawfordsville and Taliaferro County; desegregation of Taliaferro County; Lester Hankerson; Jimmy Wells; Willie Bolden in Crawfordsville; violence in Crawfordsville attracts attention of national media. Success of SCLC and movement in Crawfordsville; murder of African-American soldier in Social Circle, Georgia in early 1980s; involvement of FBI and Army intelligence; outrage of black community in Social Circle; Brooks and Abernathy lead march from Social Circle to Monroe; organization of African Americans in Walton County; murder of Willie Jean Carreker in Woodland, Georgia, in Talbot County by white policeman; Albert Turner; boycotts and night marches by blacks in Woodland; trial of Woodland police officers; Black Manifesto signed by Woodland city leaders; Will D. Campbell in Woodland; Johnnie Mae Owens; intentions of whites in Woodland; Brooks and training the local leadership; Herman Lodge; Macon movement leaders: Billy Young and William Randall; Brooks leaves SCLC in 1979, elected to public office in 1980.