Macon, Georgia, may not be considered a major site on the historic civil rights
trail, but try telling people like Myrna Davis Bell or Jimmy Mills, Jr.,
that nothing significant happened here. They, along with more than 250
others gathered at the Macon Coliseum on a bright sunny Tuesday on the
last day of summer to share their stories when the Voices of Civil Rights
bus rolled into town.
Mayor C. Jack Ellis’s opening remarks included his own recounting
of being refused service at a Krystal restaurant: “I remember
the rage in the faces of the grown men who chased us out, hurling obscenities
as if we had committed a major crime; I haven’t been back to
a Krystal since.”
Frank Johnson told of marching in Alabama and Mississippi and being
threatened by law authorities who said, “You’re gonna die
today, nigger.” Jackson responded by laughing defiantly in their
faces, a chilling cackle he repeated for the gathering even though
he was wheelchair-bound. “They called me the laughing nigger.
They said I was crazy.” Jackson said he could laugh because he
knew he was on God’s side. “We met the devil head on.”
Bell, the daughter of Walter Davis, president of the local chapter
of the NAACP from 1959 to 1962, spoke of the first lunch counter sit-ins
in Macon, four months after the tactic was first employed in North
Carolina. “I had an aunt who worked in the kitchen of Newberry’s.
It was so painful watching her stand there; she could not serve me.
We sat and sat. We refused to move. The manager went and got a screwdriver
and unscrewed the stools. We all fell on the floor. It was awful. We
moved from there to Woolworth’s. A young man, a white guy, kept
walking back and forth behind us at the lunch counter. Through the
mirror behind the counter, I could see my dad standing in the background
watching us. By the time this man behind us got to me, I could see
he went to pull a knife behind my back. I remember my dad jumping over,
knocking the knife from his hand.” Later, a football was thrown
through the Davis family’s front window. A cross was burned on
their lawn. Those actions only strengthened her family’s resolve.
Jimmy Mills, Jr. explained he had to support the movement from the
background because of his attitude. “The first time I tried to
sit in at Woolworth’s and H.L. Green, I sat down to eat some
ice cream and cake and a guy spat on me. When he did, it was a fight.” Mills
landed the first punch.
Their stories illustrated that what happened in places such as Macon
may not have made national headlines, but their actions were just as
critical to the movement as what went down in Greensboro, Selma, Birmingham,
Philadelphia, and Memphis, and made all the difference in the world
in their respective hometowns.
