Word: amerson
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DIED. LUCIUS AMERSON, 60, one of the Deep South's first black sheriffs; of complications related to a stroke; in Tuskegee, Alabama. A pioneer in the resurgence of black participation in Southern civic life, Amerson served as Macon County sheriff from 1967 to 1987, well into the era of the New South...
...cent back. For years whites held all the elected positions. Then, with the coming of the Civil Rights Movement, Negroes started working their way into the system. It was Macon County that elected the first black sheriff ever (or since reconstruction) in the South. (His name was Lucius Amerson. It got lots of New York Times coverage when it happened. It also turned out what he wasn't much better than the white guys, but you'd have to know the South to understand that...
...Negro officeholders from Negro constituencies has scarcely changed. In 1966, six Negroes were elected to the House?all from heavily Negro districts. There are 154 Negroes among the nation's 7,600 state legislators, compared with 36 in 1960; all but seven are from predominantly black constituencies. Lucius Amerson became the South's only Negro sheriff, in an Alabama county whose population is 84% colored...
...Negro legislators. In Alabama's Lowndes County, black voters?who outnumber whites 55% to 45%?were less than enthusiastic about Stokely Carmichael's aggressive Black Panther ticket, which went down to defeat. Elsewhere in the state, several Negroes were elected, notably Macon County's Lucius Amerson, 32, a Korean War paratrooper and former postal clerk who became the South's only Negro sheriff. In Dallas County, Selma's public-safety director, Wilson Baker, who acted with memorable restraint during last year's voting-rights demonstrations, was elected sheriff over Incumbent Jim Clark, whose brutal treatment of Negroes shocked...
...state house of representatives. But although many whites continued to resist the inevitability of full-scale Negro political participation, there were heartening signs of reasonableness. Amid warnings of violence uttered by embittered Macon County whites, Sheriff Sadler took pains to call his defeat "fair and square" and to wish Amerson luck. "I think the white people knew," said Sadler, "that sooner or later there would be a Negro elected to this office...