Cordele, Georgia is a rural farming town in the southwestern part of the state. It was, and is still known mostly for its farmers market. Cordele has been named “The Watermelon Capital of the World” because of the volume of watermelons that pass through the farmers market each summer. These melons are destined for all points east of the Mississippi river, and especially the east coast. If you buy a watermelon for your Fourth of July celebration or picnic, it is highly likely that this melon came through the Cordele farmers market on its way to your local grocery store.
My wife’s uncle, Earlie Posey, was the Crisp County sheriff of during the turbulent years of the civil rights movement in the south, the mid sixties.
Those days were still the time of good ‘ole boy politics in the south, and Earlie was an honest man who believed that the people who elected him were the ones he really served, so as a result, he was a one term sheriff.
However, this story is not about Mr. Posey, but an incident that happened during his tenure as the “High Sheriff” of Crisp County, Georgia.
I learned about this story because Earlie was approaching his ninetieth birthday and I was going to do a sort of collage of his life. Earlie had been a Cordele police officer, a state patrol officer, and sheriff, among other various occupations during his ninety years.
I remembered something about this incident from my high school days, in the neighboring town of Vienna, but had forgotten the details long ago.
A month or so before Earlie’s birthday, I was in the Cordele library researching the newspaper microfilm during the years of his term, 1962 to 1966 for news stories relating to incidents reported during his term in office and him personally.
During times of local civil unrest, or protest marches, the town newspaper,”The Cordele Dispatch” had a policy of not printing articles about civil rights incidents. Supposedly so as not to fan the flames, or add to already high racial tension.
In the police blotter i saw several people had been arrested for trespassing on government property, but nothing more. I went forward a few days, and saw another report where two or three of these folks had been arraigned. I was curious about the circumstances surrounding these arrests, and asked Earlie about them.
After speaking with Earlie, I went to the Library in Albany, a small city about forty miles away and went to their archives. Although the local newspaper had printed nothing about the incident, a news crew from the television station in Albany, WALB, was there and the story was picked up by the wire services and made national headlines.
This year, Cordele had seen civil rights marches but thankfully, very little, if any violence associated with them. As was common with public officials and local gentry in the south at this time, these demonstrations and subsequent mayhem were usually blamed on “outside agitators.” These “outside agitators” were mostly college students from up north who came south to work with the NAACP and SNCC for the purpose of voter registration drives. Back then, very few Negros, as they were called then, voted in Crisp County. The reasons were numerous, but all to often it was because of intimidation.
It was was a beautiful spring day in Cordele. There was a march this day, but not for voter registration. The march was to protest the disparity of the actual physical condition between the black and white high school buildings. The night before there had been a break in of the school board building with much vandalism.
The march was peaceful enough until several of the protesters went up on the lawn of the courthouse. Their intention was to haul down the U.S. and Georgia state flags and replace them with some civil rights banners. This particular U.S. flag had been flown for many years, but, although old it was still serviceable. However, because it was old and weather worn, it was therefore fragile.
As the protesters struggled to bring down the flags, the pole was bent and the lanyard got stuck in its track. The flags were close enough to the ground to be reached and the protestors unhooked the Ga. State flag and began pulling on the US flag. Because of its weatherworn condition, the stitching gave way and the flag appeared to have been torn. In actuality the flag was not torn, but merely pulled apart at the seams weakened by age. It was at this point a Black man who was a Korean War Veteran, stepped up and took the flag away from the protestors. I believe Earlie told me they did manage to actually put up some of the protest banners, but those were soon brought down by the crowd.
The story, because it had been picked up by the wire services, became a front page headline in many newspapers across the country. The reason for this was simple. This was the first time in our country's history that the American flag had been desecrated, or even disrespected during any kind of protest.
Usually, the American flag preceded protesters as a show of patriotism and used symbolically to show their cause was an American right.
"Uncle" Earlie's only comment to the press was, "We're in hot water now."
For the next few days, recriminations were reported from everywhere. Especially the NAACP and SNCC, things were said like, “We would never disrespect our nations flag,” which I believed to be truth.
However, all of the veterans service organizations, i.e.: VFW, DAV, American Legion, were so incensed, they lobbied congress to pass the first law making it a federal crime to desecrate the flag. It took two years for the legislation to pass, but it was signed into law.
Over the next few years flag burnings and such became a symbol of protest against the war in Viet-Nam. Although some were prosecuted under the new law, a fairly new organization called the ACLU took the issue all the way to the Supreme Court.
Now the Supreme Court, being the last bastion for interpretation of the constitution, ruled on the matter.
Their decision was:
If it is your own flag and you are on your own, or public property, then it is not a crime to do whatever you please with the flag, and repealed the law.
Go figure.
Nowadays the folks in Cordele either don’t, or don’t want to remember the day their little town made history.
Walt, please, can you send the name and address of that African-Ameican Veteran fro the Korean War, so I can send him a Korean War Medal that he so well deserve. (Maybe we ran together like hell on that Inchon beach)
This was a compelling story, the only flaw I found on that demonstration, was adding to the lowering down of Georgia's State flag...the Star & Stripes, that one, should had been left alone as a matter of respect for all it represents.
As a WWII, Korea and Vietnam veteran soldier, Law or not Law I will shot the head off of anyone I caugh burning the flag.
Semper Fi
Georg
Good article of a part of history of the area. Amazing how one doesn't not know what side of the table the initials will fall. today they are against, yet tomorrow they would not have done what they did. I liked this because it's just the way it is. Even if just for today. Your title is perfect for the write. Yes, it's only cloth, yet put together a certain way it becomes so much more. Lady J
We should dissolve the Supreme Court as it is no longer an unbiased interpretor of the law but makes descisions based on how the political winds are blowing.
The authors of Savannah: Brokers, Bankers and Bay Lane: Inside the Slave Trade (Civil War Savannah), received the 2012 Award for Excellence in Research from the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board. The Award was issued by then Georgia Secretary
