About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 2020)
STATE The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com Sunday, January 26, 2020 3C Photos rekindle need to keep MLK’s legacy alive In this February 1964 photo, Rev. Martin Luther King speaks at the Chatham County Crusade for Voters in Savannah. In this February 1964 photo, Rev. Martin Luther King, flanked by, Ralph D. Abernathy, right, and Andrew Young, arrive at the Chatham County Crusade for Voters in Savannah. Photos by Savannah Morning News via Associated Press In this Sept. 29,1964 photo, Rev. Martin Luther King, center, speaks with the media speaks at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention in Savannah. Ralph D. Abernathy, second from right, and Andrew Young, right, listen. BY NICK ROBERTSON Savannah Morning News SAVANNAH - As Savan nah Morning News photo chief Steve Bisson worked through a half-century-old box of negatives to catalog, he made a discovery. Sub merged within the newspa per’s photo files, 14 negatives provided documentation of two Savannah appearances by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964. According to the newspa per’s records and a copy of the February 1964 Southern Christian Leadership Confer ence newsletter presented by Tougaloo College’s online Civil Rights Movement Archive, King visited Savan nah at least twice in 1964. The newly discovered photos show the civil rights leader when he gave a speech early in the year at the Savannah Municipal Auditorium to pro mote voter registration, and again in September when the eighth annual SCLC conven tion was held in Savannah. Former Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson, who was active in the civil rights movement with the NAACP in various communities around the South in the 1960s, remembers that when King visited Savannah, he was impressed by the local leaders who were advocating for racial equality. “Savannah didn’t need any help, so he left, because he felt Savannah had great lead ership,” Jackson said. She said King worked with her mentor, Savannah civil rights legend W.W. Law, who had helped the community make great progress toward desegregation since the early 1950s. “Savannah started inte grating before the Civil Rights Act was passed,” Jack- son said. But as every year goes by, and an increasing number of youths anticipate Martin Luther King Jr. Day more as a holiday than a com memoration, Jackson asserts that time is of the essence when it comes to teaching the civil rights movement’s significance. “We have not told our sto ries,” Jackson said. “We are losing those stories.” Looking back at those times, Jackson vividly recalls joining local civil rights dem onstrations during the early 1960s, including sit-ins at segregated Broughton Street businesses and wade-ins at Tybee Island’s whites- only beaches. Although the authorities sometimes reacted harshly to these movements, she was not intimidated by potential brutality. “You knew you were doing the right thing,” Jackson said, crediting Law for teaching her and many other Savan nah civil rights activists to stand up for themselves with courage and peaceful resis tance. “I was mesmerized by the kind of things I learned at that early age.” Jackson is one of Savan nah’s few surviving par ticipants in the civil rights movement from the time King led it, before his assas sination April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. When archived photos were exam ined by Vaughnette Goode- Walker, the director of Savannah’s Ralph Mark Gil bert Civil Rights Museum, she was unable to recognize any locals who are still alive. “Unfortunately, it was like looking at ghosts,” Goode- Walker said, noting the loss of people with firsthand experience in the civil rights movement increases the imperative nature of edu cating 21st-century African American youths about the struggles for equality that their ancestors endured. “Our young people are so technology-driven, they don’t want to pick up a book and read it,” Goode-Walker said of civil rights history. She said the many gains achieved by civil rights trailblazers have created a situation where youths take their hard-fought rights for granted, increasing the chal lenge of passing on King’s legacy. “How do you relate to them?” Jackson agrees that pre serving and advancing racial equality can only be achieved by passing on detailed accounts of what King and many other civil rights activists experienced. “I really don’t feel like we’ve told our story,” Jack- son said. “These kids don’t know how the schools inte grated. They don’t know why they can be managers at stores on Broughton.... They don’t know the sacrifices. ” At Savannah’s Civil Rights Museum, Goode-Walker imparts the movement’s spirit to elementary school students by leading them in simulated demonstrations, complete with handmade protest signs and loud chants. “I do mock protests here with the kiddos,” Goode- Walker said, explaining that she lets the schoolchildren hold a demonstration for the cause of their choice. “They’ll say, ‘Longer lunch!”’ Slaying of Valdosta radio DJ remains unsolved after 8 years Associated Press The slaying of a South Georgia disc jockey remains unsolved eight years after he was gunned down out side the radio station where he worked. Stephon Edgerton was known on the air as Juan Gotti to listeners of WGOV radio in Valdosta. He stepped outside the station just before midnight on Jan. 20, 2012, when somebody shot him three times. “It hurts that someone has not been caught, tried and convicted,” his wife Hilda Edgerton told the Valdosta Daily Times. “He wasn’t there for his daughter’s high school graduation and won’t be there when she graduates from college soon. He didn’t see his sons become football players and musicians.” Edgerton managed to call 911 before he died and give a description of his attacker — a white man wearing a white skull cap or mask, according to the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Ashley Paulk said a person he considered a prime suspect in Edgerton’s slaying was killed in a shoot out a couple of years after the DJ’s death. He said detec tives will follow up if any new leads in the case arise. Hilda Edgerton said she vividly remembers the last time she saw her husband. He was leaving for his 6 p.m. shift at the radio station, and told his children he planned to cook for their grandmoth er’s birthday the next day. She said: “He looked at all the kids and said, ‘I love you all. I love you. See you later.’” Hale Honeybells The once a year citrus sensation! Sweet as honey, incredibly juicy, fiery orange and shaped like a bell. Rare Hale Honeybells are available in limited quantities for one month only. You’ll receive 24 snack size Hale Honeybells. Our tangerine-grapefruit hybrid is hand clipped off the tree at its peak, hand packed, then rushed to you days off the tree in January. Treat yourself or give as gifts. Pre-order now to reserve your share of this year’s crop with this introductory offer. Buy 12 get 12 more pieces FREE! Call 1-844-703-1119 to Order Item 2693X or Visit HaleGroves.com/A12752 Only $29.99 plus $5.99 shipping & processing. Satisfaction completely guaranteed. Since 1947. 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