Local author Harold Michael Harvey released his latest book titled “Fantasy Five: An Unimaginable History, The Election of Macon’s First Black Councilmembers,” with hopes of preserving history in a time where many seem keen on forgetting it.
The book, as the name might suggest, chronicles the historic election of five Black city council members in 1975 — the first time the city had elected any Black council members. The council members were Delores Brooks, Willie C. Hill, Julius Vinson, Vernon Colbert, and Rev. Eddie D. Smith.
Harvey, a former journalist himself who grew up partly in Macon, saw the spectacle unfold before his own eyes while he was a reporter for the Macon Courrier. Now, nearly 50 years later, he’s making sure the history lives on.
“50 years have come and gone, and very few people could name all five,” Harvey said.
For Harvey, it’s crucial that we don’t forget our histories — even the lesser known ones like that of the 1975 Macon city council elections.
When he first contemplated writing the book, he did a bit of a litmus test around town to see if anyone of his age group thought it was a good idea — and their reaction highlighted just how necessary preserving his history was for Harvey.
“Too many of them said “well, who were they?” said Harvey, laughing at the irony. “I only had an idea, but I think that really inspired me to write about it.”
Harvey had a front row seat to the historic changes happening in Macon’s politics in 1975; at the time, he was working for Rev. Julius C. Hope, who became the first Black person to run for mayor in Macon in 1975, but eventually lost to Buck Melton Sr.
Still, working for the reverend meant Harvey was able to observe everything going on, including a multitude of outings where the Black candidates for city council also appeared.
Harvey also had personal connections with some of the council members prior to their election, growing up in part in the tight-knit Macon Black community.
The radical shift in the demographic makeup of Macon’s city council in 1975 was in part a response to events of the years preceding it, some most consequential years in recent American history, Harvey noted.
In 1968, of course, Dr. King’s assassination rocked the country and catalyzed even more support for the Civil Rights Movement. In Macon, specifically, tensions were high, just like in many parts of the country. In 1970, then-mayor of Macon Ronnie Thompson, who would go on a year later to earn the nickname “Machine Gun” Ronnie Thompson, issued a “shoot to kill” order in response to a planned boycott from the Black Liberation Front.
“I think the Black community sort of felt hopeless,” Harvey said. “There was allegedly some disturbance downtown, so the mayor issued the shoot-to-kill order… there was a headline that said this shoot-to-kill order was directed at Blacks. So it made it sort of clear.”
In 1972, just a couple years later, Harvey described another movement in Macon that was calling for jobs and greater opportunities in previously segregated areas — or better said, desegregated in name only.
“Although we had, by 1964, the Civil Rights Act that desegregated public accommodations, the bus was still segregated and there were only certain jobs that you could and couldn’t have at that point in time,” Harvey said, explaining segregation wasn’t simply an overnight process. “It grew out of a sense of frustration.”
Of all of the events leading up to the 1975 elections, however, one, in particular, paved the pathway for the election of the first five Black council members to be possible in a way it hadn’t in the past.
David Lucas, one of Harvey’s peers at their alma mater, Tuskegee University, was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1974, representing District 102. In 1975, he introduced a bill to create ward voting districts across the city. Before this, city council members ran citywide and could live anywhere in the city, which weakened voting power for Black residents.
After negotiations and amendments, they decided on districts that they hoped could produce two, maybe three Black members of the 15-member city council to represent the city’s overlooked residents.
To their surprise, the new method of voting yielded a third of city council members being Black that year and ultimately made history — a history that translated into more opportunities and accountability. In one instance described in the book, the five council members were able to leverage their votes to stop the appointment of a distrusted public servant to the municipal court, which the Black community felt would not carry out equal justice. They were ultimately able to get the mayor to appoint Tom Jackson, the second Black attorney in Macon, according to Harvey, preceded only by Austin T. Walden, who founded the Gate City Bar Association, which Harvey himself would later go on to be the president of during his later career as an attorney.
And while the council members certainly weren’t perfect, said Harvey, like many ‘firsts’ throughout history they represented something bigger than themselves.
Looking back to move forward
Though the 1975 election is the focal point of the book, Harvey’s book does more than just cover the election — because understanding the context and history of the city is important to understanding the barriers broken, he said. The book stretches as far back as 1823 when the city was officially incorporated, as well as the role of its Black population during the Reconstruction Era, when Black residents were able to hold offices for a short time before being forced out through intimidation, laws and violence — a common theme found in many cities across the nation in the Reconstruction Era.
Between 1867 and 1872, 69 Black Georgians “served as delegates to the constitutional convention (1867-68) or as members of the state legislature,” according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. In the 1880s and ’90s, Black elected officials in the state legislature tapered off until W.H. Rogers became the last elected Black member of the state legislature in 1906, ahead of Jim Crow laws, which stifled progress made by Black Georgians. Georgia didn’t elect its next Black Georgia state senator until 1962 when it elected Leroy Johnson.
But while these larger stories are more documented, Harvey said he wanted to do his part in ensuring smaller stories like the Macon’ Fantasy Five” are recognized and remembered, too, as we march towards the future.
“There are lessons to be learned in all of the efforts to gain equality throughout the country. We all have a general sense of the Civil Rights Movement, the battles fought by Dr. King and so forth, but how does that translate on a local level,” asked Harvey. “Once the opportunity came, you got a small microcosm of how the system worked on a local level, as opposed to what’s taking place in Congress.”
These histories, said Harvey, can be looked at as blueprints for politicians today, especially as he sees some of the same problems like poor infrastructure and substandard housing still an issue in Macon today.
“My challenge to this new group of council members is to take a page out of the book of the first five — and although they didn’t form a Black caucus, they did unite behind issues that were critical to the Black community,” Harvey said. “I think the reason we write about these things, the reason we should study these examples of small communities, is what we can learn from them.”
The book began shipping out on Oct. 18. Next month, Harvey will be doing a book talk and official launch event at the Middle Georgia Regional Library on Nov. 20.
