Word: amerson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Weeks of energetic politicking behind him, Lucius Amerson sat in a Tuskegee office on election day fidgeting over the latest returns. At 8:15 p.m., a young campaign worker hung up the phone and exultantly pounded a fist on the table. "You won!" the youth cried. "You won!" Amerson leaned back and laughed with relief. By a 387-vote margin, the stocky ex-postal clerk had be come the first Alabama Negro to win a Democratic nomination for sheriff since the misty days of Reconstruction...
...Amerson, 32, a onetime Army paratrooper and father of two, was forced into last week's runoff for Macon County sheriff when neither he nor white Incumbent Harvey Sadler won a majority in Alabama's May 3 Democratic primary. The county has the highest proportion of Negroes (84%) of any in the U.S., and Negroes hold a 7,000 to 2,000 voter registration advantage. Amerson's showdown victory was still a considerable accomplishment. Few men in the rural South are more powerful than the local sheriff, and the office is the most sacrosanct of white preserves...