Black Power in Greene County

There are 11,021 citizens in Greene County, Ala., and 78% of them are black. They mainly work the soybean and cotton fields that surround the tiny county seat of Eutaw. 80 miles southwest of Birmingham. Greene County is poor: the median per capita income is $4,019. But its black residents are proud of a civil rights revolution they helped create. Says John Kennard, the county’s first black tax assessor: “One of the most cherished things our people have here in the black belt is the right to vote.” TIME Atlanta Bureau Chief Joseph N. Boyce visited Eutaw last week. His report:

In the early ’60s, only 5.5% of the county’s 5,000 eligible blacks were registered to vote. Meanwhile, because of a failure to purge voting lists, there were more white registered voters than there were white adults in the county. But then came the Voting Rights Act. William Branch, a local high school teacher who had been fired because of his political activities, and Thomas Gilmore, one of his former pupils, began a registration drive with help from national civil rights groups that would change the balance of power in Greene County.

The task was not easy. At one black church, where a meeting was held, Gilmore asked those who had been evicted from their homes for trying to register to move to the left side of the aisle. He recalls: “It seemed like the whole church moved to the left.” Within three years, however, thanks to the watchful eyes of supervising federal officials, almost 80% of the county’s eligible blacks were registered. In the 1968 elections, Branch offered white political bosses a compromise: although blacks then had 60% of the vote, they would run a combined slate with whites, splitting the available offices fifty-fifty. A white probate judge had a simpler solution: he refused to put the black names on the ballot.

The resulting lawsuit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ordered a new election, with all names on the ballot, to be held in July 1969. Blacks won all of the contested positions. A year later, Branch won the job of probate judge from the man who had kept blacks off the ballot. In the same election, Gilmore became sheriff. Says Branch: “I used to tell my students to prepare themselves, that they could some day be elected to public office. They looked at me like I was a graduate of an insane asylum.”

Officials of Greene County say it is important to extend the Voting Rights Act so that other areas can duplicate these gains. Explains Assessor Kennard: “We came through it all. But there’s Pickens County to the north with a majority of black residents but no black elected officials, and Hale County, which has just begun with black membership on the county commission.” Judge Branch adds that failure to renew the act could lead to backsliding. Says he: “It would turn back the clock on a lot of the progress.”

Political power has not solved all of the problems of blacks in Greene County, particularly riot the economic ones. But things are looking up. German and Japanese firms are considering building paper and pulp mills in the county, and oil engineers are scouting for drilling sites. More important, political change has affected racial attitudes. Ralph Banks Jr., a member of a landed white family, was elected to a district judgeship with the strong support of blacks. Says Banks of his fellow whites who dreaded the shift in power: “It took them a while to realize the county was not going to hell.”