Greene County Democrat

Category: Community

  • Newswire :Vice-President Kamala Harris hauls in $200 million in the first week of her candidacy

    Vice President Kamala Harris takes her official portrait Thursday, March 4, 2021, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

     

    She adds 170,000 volunteers

    By Blackmansstreettoday

     

    Kamala Harris raked in $200 million in her first week as a presidential candidate, and signed more than 170,000 volunteers to her campaign, “Harris for President,” communications director Michael Tyler wrote in a statement announcing the fundraising haul. 

    The haul comes amid rumors that Republican president Donald Trump plans to dump Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate because Trump is not happy with some of his statements, including his calling some women “childless cat ladies.”

    Trump, the former president, selected Vance as his vice president on (July 15, 2024).

    Trump is waiting to see who Harris will select as her vice president before dumping Vance if Harris names a much stronger candidate as her vice president.
    ,
    The Harris campaign said 66% of the recent donations made came from first-time donors and were given after President Biden announced last Sunday that he was stepping down and endorsing her to be the Democratic nominee. 

    The total donations thus far are staggering and point to the intensity surrounding her nascent bid with 100 days to go before Election Day.

    To put that figure in perspective, it’s four times what the Biden re-election effort raised in the entire month of April. 

    Former president Trump’s campaign said it raised nearly $112 million during June, Politico reported. 

    The announcement comes one week after President Joe Biden’s bombshell decision to end his re-election bid and throw his support behind the vice president.

    “The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Harris for President communications director Michael Tyler wrote in the same fundraising report.

    Since Harris became the party’s all-but-certain presidential nominee, Democrats have been jolted out of their collective malaise following Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month against Donald Trump.

    With Harris ascending to the top of the ticket, the party saw mammoth fundraising, including topping the $100 million mark in her first full day as the Democrats’ likely nominee. The campaign soon announced she had secured enough verbal commitments from delegates to secure the party’s nomination ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month.

    The energy behind Harris, who is of Black and South Asian descent, is also showing up in the polls, with Harris closing the deficit that had widened in the final weeks Biden was the presumptive nominee.

  • Newswire: Federation set to honor Congressman James Clyburn at Annual Meeting

    Congressman James Clyburn

    The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund will award its ‘Estelle Witherspoon Lifetime Achievement Award’ to Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina.
    The award will be presented at an August 15, Thursday evening fundraising dinner ,at the Sheraton Civic Center Hotel in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.

    The annual banquet will mark the start of the Federation’s 57th Annual Meeting. On August 16 and 17th, the meeting continues at the Federation’s Rural Training and Research Center, between Epes and Gainesville, in Sumter County, Alabama. There will be panels, workshops and demonstrations on agricultural and rural development issues.

    Congressman James Clyburn has been a champion for Black farmers and other rural people for his entire career in Congress representing South Carolina’s Sixth District. He has served as Majority Whip and Assistant to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and leader of the National Democratic Party.

    Persons interested in registering to attend all or any part of the Federation/LAF Annual Meeting
    should go to the organization’s website at: http://www.federation.coop for more information

  • Strides Against Drug

  • SOS to commemorate signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, in Selma, on Tuesday, August 6, 2024

    An inspirational Celebration and Commemoration of the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is set for Tuesday, August 6th, at 2:30 p.m. at the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute and Statue Park on the Montgomery side of the bridge in Selma. The public is invited and encouraged to attend, and elected officials are specifically invited to participate. August 6th is the 59th Anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s signing this landmark piece of legislation into law.

    Former State Senator Hank Sanders said,” We must come back to the bridge for this momentous anniversary. This event is also an opportunity to encourage all voters to fully exercise their right to vote in the 2024 November General Election and in all elections. Passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act would not have been possible without the sacrifice of countless individuals whose names are both known and unknown. “

    So many people from diverse backgrounds and from across this country fought for the right to vote for all United States citizens. Some gave the ultimate sacrifice – their lives – for the right to vote, including men and women, Blacks and Whites, young and old, and members of the clergy. Selma played a crucial role in the Movement that brought about the 1965 Voting Rights Act and is a worldwide symbol for struggles for the right to vote.

    Attorney Faya Rose Toure said, “This may be the last election we will be able to participate in, if some candidates, with an authoritarian streak, get elected and start to dismantle our Constitution and destroy our democracy. WE must return to the bridge on August 6, 2024.”

    Leaders of national organizations have been invited to participate, and some participating in the August 6th event include Southern Christian Leadership Conference National President & CEO Charles Steele and others with SCLC. U.S. Representative Terri Sewell (CD 7) has been invited as has the Democratic nominee for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, Shomari Figures.

    A cookout is being held as part of the Voting Rights Celebration and Commemoration with all food being provided at no cost to all those in attendance. School children also played a pivotal role in the Voting Rights Movements, and free basketballs have been provided by North Star Beloved Community Corporation in conjunction with Kay Doherty and Sharing, Inc and will be given to children who participate in the August 6th Celebration and Commemoration.

    This event is sponsored by SOS – the Save Ourselves Movement for Justice and Democracy and other social and economic justice organizations in the state. The National Voting Rights Museum & Institute is located at 6 US-80 East in Selma on the Montgomery side of the foot of the Bridge.

    For more information contact: Shelley Fearson at 334-262-0932; John Zippert at 205/657-0273 and Hank Sanders at 334/782-1651.

  • Local artists plan arts activities for festival’s Kid’s Tent

    Kid’s Tent at annual festival engages youth in hands-on art activities

    Mynecia (Mya) Steele and Noelle Goodson Hines,

    By Carol P. Zippert

    The annual Black Belt Folk Roots Festival was conceived and planned as a community celebration, lifting the culture and traditions of the region, and is currently in its 49th year.
    The festival is scheduled for Saturday, August 24 and Sunday, August 25 on the Thomas Gilmore (old courthouse) square.
    A special feature of the annual Black Belt Folk Roots Festival is the Kid’s Tent which provides hands-on-art activities for young people at the festival site on Saturday, August 24, 2024. The Kid’s Tent will welcome young people on the festival grounds to participate in the various hands-on-arts activities beginning at 1:00 pm on Saturday, August 24. As a community celebration is is important that the festival is inviting to the children. We must assure that they have a place in this special community gathering.
    The Kid’s Tent will be located on the Northern area of the town square, across from Eutaw City Hall.
    Greene County artists, Mynecia (Mya) Steele and Noelle Goodson Hines, will lead the youth activities engaging them in creative exercises including drawing, painting, face painting and more. The participating youth will take home their creations as well as additional art supplies.
    Mynecia Steele is a published author and graphic artists who will also have a selection of her works for display and sale at the festival. Her various children’s books, themed posters and myriad creations have become treasured items locally as well as throughout the worldwide web, under her brand This is Myne Design. Mya is also sought out as a festival and other events planner. Mya is a native of Greene County, educated in the Greene County School System and a graduate of Troy University.
    Noelle Hines, a graduate of Alabama A&M University, is a Visual Artist, Graphic Designer, and all around creative. Affectionately known as “the Paintbrush Pimp”, she hails from Mobile, Alabama. Noëlle first realized her talent at the age of 5, and has been honing her craft for over 30 years. Noëlle is a traditional artist who creates visually stimulating designs that enhance thinking capacity and persuasion, exhibits cultural diversities, and spirited individuality. She is the owner and CEO of JoyeuxWorks: graphics.art.design, an art and design firm that creates branding packages and stationery, logos, websites, invitation suites, social media posts, billboard layouts, product design, mockups, push marketing visuals, t-shirt design, custom artwork, portraits, murals, and much more. Noëlle’s work can be viewed on the streets of Downtown Mobile, Alabama and on the walls of various schools throughout the state of Alabama, including Robert Brown Middle School in Eutaw (Greene County). Noëlle lives in Eutaw Alabama with her husband, daughter, and stepson.

  • Newswire :Bernice Johnson Reagon, whose powerful voice helped propel the Civil Rights Movement, has died

    Bernice Johnson Reagon


    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bernice Johnson Reagon, a musician and scholar who used her rich, powerful contralto voice in the service of the American Civil Rights Movement and human rights struggles around the world, died on July 16, according to her daughter’s social media post. She was 81.
    Reagon was probably best known as the founder of the internationally renowned African American female a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, which she led from 1973 until her retirement in 2004. The Grammy-nominated group’s mission has been to educate and empower as well as entertain. They perform songs from a wide range of genres that include spirituals, children’s songs, blues and jazz. Some of their original compositions honor American civil rights leaders and international freedom movements like the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
    “She was incredible,” said Tammy Kernodle, a distinguished professor of music at Miami University who specializes in African American music. She described Reagon as someone “whose divine energy and intellect and talent all intersect in such a way to initiate change in the atmosphere.”
    Reagon’s musical activism began in the early 1960s when she served as a field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and became an original member of its Freedom Singers, according to an obituary posted on social media by her daughter, musican Toshi Reagon. The group reunited and was joined by Toshi Reagon to perform for then-President Barack Obama in 2010 as part of a White House performance series that was also broadcast nationwide on public television.
    Born in Dougherty County outside of Albany, Georgia, in 1942, Reagon attended music workshops in the early 1960s at Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, a training ground for activists. At an anniversary gathering in 2007, Reagon explained how the school helped her see her musical heritage as something special.
    “From the time I was born, we were always singing,” Reagon said. “When you’re inside a culture and, quote, ‘doing what comes naturally to you,’ you don’t pay attention to it. … I think my work as a cultural scholar, singer and composer would be completely different if I had not had someone draw my attention to the people who use songs to stay alive, or to keep themselves together, or to lift up the energy in a movement.”
    While a student at Albany State College, Reagon was jailed for attending a civil rights demonstration and expelled. She later graduated from Spellman College. She formed Sweet Honey in the Rock while a graduate student of history at Howard University and vocal director of the D.C. Black Repertory Company.
    Reagon recorded her first solo album, “Folk Songs: The South,” with Folkways Records in 1965. In 1966 she became a founding member of the Atlanta-based Harambee Singers.
    Reagon began working with the Smithsonian Institution in 1969, when she was invited to develop and curate a 1970 festival program, Black Music Through the Languages of the New World, according to the Smithsonian. She went on to curate the African Diaspora Program and to found and direct the Program in Black American Culture at the National Museum of American History, where she was later a curator emeritus. She produced and performed on numerous Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
    For a decade, beginning in 1993, Reagon served as distinguished professor in history at American University in Washington, later becoming a professor emerita.
    We assume that music was always a part of civil rights activism, Kernodle said, but it was people like Reagon who made music “part of the strategy of nonviolent resistance. …They took those songs, they took those practices from inside the church to the streets and the jail cells. And they universalized those songs.”
    “What she also did that was very important was that she historicized how that music functioned in the civil rights movement,” Kernodle added. “Her dissertation was one of the first real studies of civil rights music.”
    Reagon received two George F. Peabody Awards, including for her work as principal scholar, conceptual producer and host of the Smithsonian Institution and National Public Radio series “Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions.”
    She was also the recipient of the Charles E. Frankel Prize, Presidential Medal, for outstanding contributions to public understanding of the humanities, a MacArthur Fellows Program award, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change Trumpet of Conscience Award.

  • Newswire: Bodycam video reveals chaotic scene of deputy fatally shooting Sonya Massey, who called 911 for help

    Sonya Massey


    SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Sonya Massey ducked and apologized to an Illinois sheriff’s deputy seconds before he shot the Black woman three times in her home, with one fatal blow to the head, as seen in body camera video released Monday.
    An Illinois grand jury indicted former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson, 30, who is white, last week. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct.
    The video confirmed prosecutors’ earlier account of the tense moment when Grayson yelled from across a counter at Massey to set down a pot of hot water. He then threatened to shoot her, Massey ducked, briefly rose, and Grayson fired his pistol at her.
    Authorities said Massey, 36, had called 911 earlier to report a suspected prowler. The video shows the two deputies responded just before 1 a.m. on July 6 at her home in Springfield, 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. They first walked around the house and found a black SUV with broken windows in the driveway.
    It took Massey three minutes to open the door after the deputies knocked, and she immediately said, “Don’t hurt me.” She seemed confused as they spoke at the door, and she repeated that she needed help, referenced God and told them she didn’t know who owned the car.
    Inside the house, deputies seemed exasperated as she sat on her couch and went through her purse as they asked for identification to complete a report before leaving. Then Grayson pointed out a pot sitting on a flame on the stove.
    “We don’t need a fire while we’re here,” he said. Massey immediately got up and went to the stove, moving the pot near a sink. She and Grayson seemed to share a laugh over her pan of “steaming hot water” before she unexpectedly said, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”
    “You better (expletive) not or I swear to God I’ll (expletive) shoot you in your (expletive) face.” He then pulled his 9mm pistol and demanded she drop the pot. Massey said, “OK, I’m sorry.” In Grayson’s body camera footage, he pointed his weapon at her. She ducked and raised her hands.
    Grayson was still in the living room, facing Massey and separated by a counter dividing the living room and kitchen. Prosecutors have said the separation allowed Grayson both “distance and relative cover” from Massey and the pot of hot water.
    After Grayson shot her, Grayson discouraged his partner from grabbing a medical kit to save her. “You can go get it, but that’s a headshot,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do, man.” He added: “What else do we do? I’m not taking hot (expletive) boiling water to the (expletive) face”
    Noting that Massey was still breathing, he relented and said he would get his kit, too. The other deputy said, “We can at least try to stop the bleeding.

  • Newswire : Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee dies at 74

     Congresswoman Shiela Jackson Lee

     

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent


    Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, one of the longest-serving members of the Texas delegation, has died at the age of 74. In June, Jackson Lee announced her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, yet she showed little indication of letting it interfere with her plans to run for a 16th term this November.
    The fiery congresswoman disclosed her diagnosis in a written statement shortly after winning renomination in a fiercely contested Democratic primary. Known for her unwavering commitment to social justice, she was a fervent advocate for reparations for African Americans and a vocal critic of the twice impeached and 34 times convicted felon and former President Donald Trump. Unlike some of her colleagues, she did not join the calls for President Joe Biden to step aside from the 2024 race.
    As recently as Wednesday, July 19, Jackson Lee continued to champion President Biden’s re-election campaign. “Something that does not get talked about enough: we were able to bring down homicides in Houston with federal investment,” she wrote on X. “After President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, we brought $50 million to the city to take on crime—and it worked! Local/federal partnership saved lives.”
    She added, “This House Democrat believes Joe Biden has served us well and has the best plans for the future. I am laser-focused on beating Donald Trump and delivering for America because that’s what matters.” Jackson Lee also reminded her followers that America saw one of the most significant homicide spikes ever in Trump’s last year in office. “He threw his hands in the air and did not know what to do,” she asserted. “Since he left, I am proud that our American Rescue Plan has done the very important work to bring these numbers down! Federal/local partnerships worked.”
    Jackson Lee’s many legislative achievements are significant and wide-ranging. She played a crucial role in the passage of the Violence Against Women Act. She was a senior House Committee member on the Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Budget Committees. She was the first female ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee for Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, serving as Chair during the 117th Congress.

    “The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) extends to the family of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee our profound condolences.  May the legacy and memory of Sheila Jackson Lee be enshrined in the pantheon of global freedom fighters,” said Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Jackson Lee was a powerful advocate for a free and energetic press — and for the Black Press of America in particular.
    Among her notable legislative efforts were the Sentencing Reform Act, the George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act, the RAISE Act, the Fair Chance for Youth Act, the Kimberly Vaughan Firearm Safe Storage Act, Kalief’s Law, and the American RISING Act. She also introduced the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Reauthorization and Bullying Prevention and Intervention Act and the Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act.

    A staunch supporter of women and children, Jackson Lee championed the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. She authored the Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Research and Education Act.

    Jackson Lee was widely recognized for her effectiveness and influence. Congressional Quarterly named her one of the 50 most effective Members of Congress, and U.S. News and World Report listed her among the ten most influential legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was a founder, member, and chair of the Congressional Pakistan Caucus and the Congressional Children’s Caucus. She was chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Energy Braintrust and the Justice Reform Task Force co-chair.
    A Yale University alumna, Jackson Lee earned her B.A. in Political Science with honors and later received a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School. She is survived by her husband, Dr. Elwyn Lee, an administrator at the University of Houston; her two children, Jason Lee, a Harvard University graduate, and Erica Lee, a Duke University graduate and member of the Harris County School Board; and her two grandchildren, twins Ellison Bennett Carter and Roy Lee Carter III.

  • Newswire: Harris has support of enough Democratic delegates to become party’s presidential nominee

    Vice President Kamala Harris

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against Republican Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey, as top Democrats rallied to her in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for reelection.
    The quick coalescing behind Harris marked an attempt by the party to put weeks of internecine drama over Biden’s political future behind them and to unify behind the task of defeating Trump with just over 100 days until Election Day. Prominent Democratic elected officials, party leaders and political organizations quickly lined up behind Harris in the day after Biden’s exit from the race and her campaign set a new 24-hour record for presidential donations on Monday.
    Several state delegations met late Monday to confirm their support for Harris, including Texas and her home state of California. By Monday night, Harris had the support of well more than the 1,976 delegates she’ll need to win on a first ballot, according to the AP tally. No other candidate was named by a delegate contacted by the AP.
    California state Democratic Chairman Rusty Hicks said 75% to 80% of the state’s delegation were on a call Tuesday and they unanimously supported Harris.
    “I’ve not heard anyone mentioning or calling for any other candidate,” Hicks said. “Tonight’s vote was a momentous one.”
    Still, the AP is not calling Harris the new presumptive nominee. That’s because the convention delegates are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention in August or if Democrats go through with a virtual roll call ahead of that gathering in Chicago.
    Harris, in a statement, responded to the AP tally, saying she is “grateful to President Biden and everyone in the Democratic Party who has already put their faith in me, and I look forward to taking our case directly to the American people.”
    Worries over Biden’s fitness for office were replaced by fresh signs of unity after a seismic shift to the presidential contest that upended both major political parties’ carefully honed plans for the 2024 race.
    Speaking to campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware, Harris acknowledged the “rollercoaster” of the last several weeks but expressed confidence in her new campaign team. “It is my intention to go out and earn this nomination and to win,” she said. She promised to “unite our Democratic Party, to unite our nation, and to win this election.”
    She quickly leaned into the themes that will be prominent in her campaign against Trump over the coming 100 days, contrasting her time as a prosecutor with Trump’s felony convictions — “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said — and casting herself as a defender of economic opportunity and abortion access. “Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedoms,” she said. “The baton is in our hands.”
    The president called into the meeting from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he is recovering from COVID-19, to lend his support to Harris. He planned to talk about his decision to step aside in an address to the nation later this week. “The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” Biden said in his first public remarks since announcing his decision to step aside, promising he was “not going anywhere” and plans to campaign on Harris’ behalf.
    Biden said of his decision, “It was the right thing to do.” As he handed off the mantle of leadership to Harris, Biden added: “I’m watching you kid. I love you.”
    Harris was headed to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear. The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy.
    The AP tally is based on interviews with individual delegates, public statements from state parties, many of which have announced that their delegations are supporting Harris en masse, and public statements and endorsements from individual delegates.
    Locking up the nomination was only the first item on the staggering political to-do list for Harris after learning of Biden’s plans to leave the race Sunday morning on a call with the president. She must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation that had been built to reelect Biden to boost her candidacy instead.
    On Sunday afternoon, Biden’s campaign formally changed its name to Harris for President, reflecting that she is inheriting his political operation of more than 1,000 staffers and war chest that stood at nearly $96 million at the end of June. She added $81 million to that total in the first 24 hours after Biden’s endorsement, her campaign said — a presidential fundraising record — with contributions from more than 888,000 donors.
    The campaign also saw a surge of interest after Harris took over, with more than 28,000 new volunteers registered since the announcement — a rate more than 100 times an average day from the previous Biden reelection campaign, underscoring the enthusiasm behind Harris.
    Big-name Harris endorsements Monday, including from Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, left a vanishing list of potential rivals. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts, initially encouraging a primary to strengthen the eventual nominee, said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Harris’ effort to lead the party.
    Harris, if elected, would be the first woman and first person of South Asian descent to be president.
    The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced before Biden dropped out that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin. The convention’s rules committee is scheduled to meet this week to finalize its nomination process with a virtual vote as soon as Aug. 1, the party announced on Monday, with the process completed by Aug. 7.
    “We can and will be both fast and fair as we execute this nomination,” Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee’s chair, said on a conference call with reporters. The party said the virtual roll call would feature multiple rounds of voting on nominees if multiple candidates meet the qualification threshold. To qualify, candidates must have the electronic signatures of 300 convention delegates.

  • Greene County celebrates 55th Freedom Day

    Spiver Gordon

    Greene County will hold its 55th Freedom Day Celebration on Sunday, July 28, 2024 at the Williams  M. Branch Courthouse  beginning at 4:00 p.m.  This event commemorates the 1969 special election ordered by the U.S Supreme Court when the State of Alabama refused to put the slate of candidates representing the National Democratic Party of Alabama (NDPA) on the state’s November 1968 ballot.

    The NDPA filed the lawsuit on behalf of Greene County’s Black voters which resulted in the July 29, 1969 Special Election. A copy of the symbol of the party that was on the corrected ballot is in the upper right corner of the story.

     The Keynote Speaker for the event is the honorable Tony Clayton, District Attorney Port Allen, LA and special honored guest the honorable Bill Edwards Humanitarian, Civil Rights Leader Political Leader of  Beverton, OR. Edwards was working with NDPA at the time of the 1969 Special Election.

     After passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, various civil rights organizations conducted successful voter education and registration campaigns throughout the county resulting in a high voter registration among the local 85% majority Black population.
    
 The results of the 1969 special election and the subsequent 1970 state election gave Greene County its sweeping victory of countywide Black elected officials including board of education members (who hired, Robert Brown, as the first Black school superintendent), county commissioners, sheriff, probate judge, tax collector, circuit clerk and coroner. The first Black tax collector was elected in 1978. Greene County is noted as the first county in the nation to elect all Black county officials.
    
The Freedom Day event, sponsored by the Alabama Civil Rights Museum Movement, Inc., will include food, music, and praise.  “The community is invited, including all local elected officials, to celebrate this important anniversary” said Spiver W. Gordon, President of the organization.

     The first Greene County Black elected officials roster is as follows: In 1966, Rev. Peter J. Kirksey – first Black school board member and Rev. W.D. Lewis, first Black elected to Greene County Democratic Executive Committee; in 1969 (special election) first Black Commissioners – Rev. Vassie Knott, Mr. Harry Means, Mr. Franchie Burton, and Mr. Levi Morrow, Sr., additional Black school board members, Mr. James Posey and Mr. Robert Hines.

    In 1970 Rev. William M. Branch, first Black Probate Judge, Rev. Thomas Gilmore, first Black Sheriff, Deacon John Head and Mr. Earsrie Chambers elected to the Board of Education; Mrs. Wadine Williams, first Black Circuit Clerk; Mr. Robert Cook, first Black Tax Collector; Rev. Harold Milton, first Black Coroner; in 1978, Rev. John Kennard elected as first Black Tax Assessor.