Hamilton Holmes leaves the University of Ga. in Athens, circa 1961, followed by attorney Donald Hollowell and Rev. Sam Williams. Photograph by Katheryn Kolb, courtesy of Donald Hollowell.
Welcome to the 1960s
If racial confrontation simmered in the 1950s, it exploded in the 1960s. In the previous decade, African Americans were bold enough to ask for equality, usually reaping rejection. In the 1960s, they confronted racial injustice in the courts and the streets. The courts ultimately will provide the arena to resolve race issues, but it will be an Atlanta clergyman, not a lawyer, who will be remembered as the most influential man of the era.
On Good Friday 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham as he led a protest march. Local clergymen wrote an open letter decrying the demonstrations. King responded with a long letter that came to be known as the "letter from a Birmingham jail."
In the letter, he laments waiting for justice. "We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure," he writes. "There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over..."
King writes that one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Citing St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, he explains that a just law squares with the moral law or the law of God. "Thus it is that I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong," he writes.
Just a week and a few days short of five years later, King is shot dead. But his words will prove prophetic. "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom."
The Georgia Court of Appeals gains a judge, bringing the total to seven.
The University of Georgia in Athens is desegregated with the court-ordered admission of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes.
May 5, 1960 — In Atlanta Newspapers v. Grimes, the Georgia Supreme Court holds that "liberty of press is subordinate to independence of judiciary and the proper administration of justice." The ruling stems from a Fulton County Superior Court judge’s ruling that banned the news media from photographing or recording trial participants or spectators in the courthouse or on sidewalks or public streets adjacent to the building.
Oct. 19, 1960 — Atlanta University students stage a series of sit-ins at government building lunch counters and transportation terminals. The protests lead to several arrests, including that of Martin Luther King Jr. at Rich’s department store. Pictured: An unidentified student protester hands a flyer to Atlanta lawyer Roswell E. Smith outside Rich’s.
Oct. 26, 1960 — Robert Kennedy, brother of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, calls on Gov. Ernest Vandiver and Judge Oscar Mitchell, seeking King’s release on bail following his Oct. 19 arrest.
Bremen lawyer Tom Murphy (pictured in undated photo) wins a seat in the state House of Representatives. In 1973 he will become the speaker of the House, serving until he is defeated for re-election in 2000.
The Court of Appeals gains two more judges—for a total of nine.
Jan. 9. 1961 — Vernon Jordan, a young law clerk to Donald L. Hollowell, escorts Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes to UGA to register for class. Gov. Ernest Vandiver, who is required by law to close integrated schools, does so in a way that UGA can keep operating at least for a few days: he cuts off state funding.
Jan. 10, 1961 — U.S. District Judge W. A. Bootle issues a temporary injunction preventing Gov. Ernest Vandiver from cutting off funds to the University of Georgia to prevent African-Americans from attending classes.
Jan. 12, 1961 — Judge Bootle orders UGA to readmit Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, who have been suspended for their safety, and charges Gov. Ernest Vandiver with the responsibility of protecting them. He also strikes down a state law designed to cut off funding if the University of Georgia becomes integrated. Pictured, from left: Donald Hollowell, Holmes and his father, Atlanta businessman Alfred "Tup" Holmes.
Jan. 19, 1961 — In an attempt to deal with federal pressure to integrate schools, Gov. Ernest Vandiver proposes an amendment to the Georgia Constitution that ends all laws designed to maintain segregated schools. In order to have it pass the overwhelmingly pro-segregation Legislature, he includes a local option to close schools or integrate.
May 17, 1961 — Atlanta students from the Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights file a lawsuit in an attempt to spur the end of segregation and racial discrimination in all recreational facilities and public buildings operated by the city of Atlanta. The committee’s members include Lonnie King, Julian Bond, Herschelle Sullivan, Carolyn Long and Joseph Pierce.
May 26, 1961 — The Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee establishes in Atlanta.
Aug. 30, 1961 — Atlanta Public Schools are desegregated. Pictured: Mayor William B. Hartsfield at City Hall surrounded by reporters on the day that four city high schools accept African-American students.
September 1961 — The Chamber of Commerce and African-American leaders announce an agreement that ends segregation at Downtown lunch counters.
Oct. 5, 1961 — President John F. Kennedy uses a recess appointment to place Griffin Bell, the chief of staff to Georgia Gov. Ernest Vandiver and a partner at what is now King & Spalding, on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Bell will serve until 1976. From 1977 until 1979, he will be U.S. attorney general for President Jimmy Carter, then return to King & Spalding for three decades of private practice. Photo courtesy of the Griffin B. Bell Library.
A federal court rules Georgia’s county unit system unconstitutional, increasing Atlanta's legislators from one to 12.
June 3, 1962 — A chartered Air France plane carrying Atlanta civic and cultural leaders returning from a museum tour crashes on takeoff at Orly Field in Paris, killing 106 Atlantans. Within weeks, 43 suits representing 66 families are filed against Air France in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. The plaintiffs’ lawyers pool their efforts and name a litigation committee led by William H. Schroder of Troutman, Sams, Schroder & Lockerman; Hugh Dorsey of Hansell, Post, Brandon & Dorsey; and Herbert Ringel of Cohen, Ringel, Kohler and Martin. Air France hires E. Smythe Gambrell, who has built a career centered on transportation law. That team includes Harold N. Hill, Robert R. Richardson, Cicero Garner Jr. and Charles A. Moye Jr.
The U.S. District Court orders desegregation of Atlanta’s public swimming pools and parks.
At the urging of Atlanta Police Department Chief Herbert Jenkins, Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. removes restrictions on African-American police that have been in effect since 1947. Pictured: Chief Jenkins with Baptist Sunday school students he teaches in 1962. Jenkins, the city’s longest-serving chief, is credited with guiding the city through racial tension during the desegregation of public transportation, public schools and parks.
Oct. 16, 1962 — Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., appears to lose the Democratic primary for a state Senate seat. But subsequent court battles reveal that the local political boss stuffed the ballot box for Carter’s opponent, and Carter eventually is declared the winner. He takes office in 1963.
November 1962 — Lawyer Carl E. Sanders defeats former Gov. Marvin Griffin in the Democratic primary and subsequently is elected governor. He will lead the transition toward racial desegregation, cooperating with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson on complying with civil rights laws. Picture: President Johnson, left, and Sanders at a presidential campaign dinner in 1964.
The Legislature passes legislation forming the State Bar of Georgia, a compulsory bar for Georgia lawyers, with power to regulate them. Former Gov. Hugh M. Dorsey Jr. becomes the first State Bar president.
Georgia’s county unit system is declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gray v. Sanders as a violation of the "one man, one vote" principle.
July 1963 — Metro movie theater owners meet and agree to admit six black patrons per performance through Aug. 5 and open fully after that, if there are no incidents. If integration causes unrest, the theaters claim the right to resegregate.
Aug. 28, 1963 — Martin Luther King Jr. gives his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Poor People’s Campaign march on Washington.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Martin Luther King Jr.
Nov. 10, 1963 — Milwaukee Braves sign a 25-year lease to play in the new $18 million, 52,000-seat Atlanta Stadium. Pictured: Eddie Mathews, the only player to have played for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta; president and general manager John McHale; executive Eddie Glennon; and former Braves and Atlanta Crackers coach Whitlow Wyatt at a press conference in Atlanta Stadium (later named Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium), marking the beginning on the Braves franchise.
July 1963 — Lester Maddox, wielding a gun and an ax handle, chases African-Americans from his Pickrick restaurant on Northside Drive. In August, he closed the restaurant rather than desegregate it.
Feb. 17, 1964 — Representing a group of voters in Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, Atlanta lawyer Emmet J. Bondurant secures a 6-3 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court. The court’s majority in Wesberry v. Sanders holds that a 1931 apportionment plan that resulted in the 5th District’s congressman representing two to three times as many voters as congressmen from the state’s other districts discriminated against voters of the 5th District, which at the time included Fulton, DeKalb and Rockdale counties.
On the last day of the legislative session as the house is debating a congressional redistricting bill, lawyer and Bibb County Rep. Denmark Groover (who also was house floor leader when the 1956 Confederate-emblem flag was approved), hangs from the railing of the house visitors' gallery and tries to stop the clock on the wall before it reaches midnight and signals the official end of the session.
Eleven African-Americans successfully run for seats in the Georgia Legislature, including lawyers Horace Ward and Leroy R. Johnson.
Gov. Carl Sanders asks his legislative floor leader, Arthur K. Bolton, to finish the term of Attorney General Julian Eugene Cook, who is joining the state Supreme Court. Bolton, who two decades earlier had survived being left for dead on a World War II battlefield, first rejects the offer, saying, "I don’t want to be just a flunky of the governor." Bolton relents when Sanders, a lawyer, agrees to let Bolton hire his own staff and prepare his own budget. Bolton serves until 1981, turning the Law Department into a powerful agency, independent from the political whims of legislators and the governor.
March 7, 1965 — John Lewis, now a U.S. congressman from Georgia, leads civil rights marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in a clash with baton-wielding police that becomes known as "Bloody Sunday." The violence, widely reported across the nation, hastens the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
April 12, 1966 — Atlanta Braves play their first game in the Atlanta Stadium in front of 51,000 fans. Mayor Ivan Allen throws out the first ball. Although the stadium was finished in time for the 1965 baseball season, a lawsuit filed by Milwaukee County officials prevented the team from moving to Atlanta for a year.
Republican Howard Hollis "Bo" Callaway, pictured, garners the popular vote for governor, but lacking a 50 percent majority, the Legislature selects Lester Maddox as governor.
Dec. 5, 1966 — The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bond v. Floyd that the Georgia House cannot refuse to seat Julian Bond, whose membership in the chamber was challenged because of his protests of the war in Vietnam. Pictured: Bond remains seated as the rest of the Georgia House takes the oath of office in 1966. He will be sworn in the following year and will serve until 1974. He will serve in the Georgia Senate from 1975 to 1986.
Texas Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been a protégé of Georgia’s Sen. Richard Russell, moves civil rights legislation through the Senate. Russell and others formed a "Southern bloc" that tries to block it. As chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Russell oversaw virtually every aspect of funding of the U. S. government.
Four convicts attempt to escape the Federal Penitentiary, taking 25 hostages. The Atlanta Journal prints the prisoners’ list of complaints, and the hostages are freed.
April 4, 1968 — Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tenn., where he was to lead a protest march in solidarity with striking garbage workers. Pictured: Mourners line up for the funeral procession.
Seven years after the crash of a chartered Air France plane that killed 106 Atlantans, a $5.2 million settlement is reached with the victims’ survivors.
Aug. 1, 1969 — The U.S. Justice Department sues Georgia and 81 public school systems for their failure to implement desegregation.
The U.S District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issues a regulatory injunction, which set out the defendants’ duties as a result of Brown v. Board of Education. The case comes to be known as Ridley, named for plaintiff Charles Ridley, who intervenes on behalf of minority school children. The case is U.S. and Ridley v. State of Georgia.
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