what had happened. Some curiosity seekers had also gathered and “word spread like wildfire that a demonstration was full blown and trouble was in the making.” A white man had pulled a weapon on one of the students, and a black student was taken to city hall for questioning. The man who pulled the gun was arrested, and another warrant was taken out on a man for breach of peace and terroristic threats. Seldon had already been offered the position of the county’s physical education director, but the students did not know that yet. A story on the bi-racial meeting held to discuss concerns was on the front page. There was also a photo of two Girl Scouts – one black and one white – selling the year’s first boxes of cookies to Newnan Mayor Howard Royal. The first day of full integration went off “without incident and with orderly calm” according to the front page story. “No racial issues were reported in any of the system’s 19 schools,” though there were some issues with transportation. But the next week, the Times-Herald front page read: “Parents Demand Return to Freedom of Choice.” An angry crowd of between 800 and 1000 white parents, upset with long bus rides, packed the school board meeting, and Chairman Paul McKnight “at times was shouted down as he tried to preserve order through the meeting,” the Times-Herald reported. Coweta County Citizens for Freedom of Choice was formed, led by The Reverend Franklin Treadwell and Joe Snellgrove. The committee held a rally at Drake Stadium,
Fifty Years
of Loving People
A
fter five decades of quality care for seniors and children in a vibrant community, we’re more committed than ever to providing loving care for everyone we serve. It’s what makes Christian City special, and we welcome you to come and be a part of it! Christian City delivers a full continuum of retirement housing and services for seniors in a loving and warm community setting. And we’ve ministered to children of need, neglect, and abuse for over 50 years. It truly is “loving people...loving people.”
where arch-segregationist Governor Lester Maddox addressed a crowd of 2,500 and urged them to send their children to the schools of their choice. About 25 students sought admittance to NHS and one to Central. All were turned away. A bomb threat was called into Newnan High, and the school was evacuated for a short time. There was a second bomb threat a few days later. Members of the committee called for parents to keep their children out of school, but attendance numbers stayed steady. For the next few weeks, letters from parents detailing their fight for freedom filled the editorial page. The committee threatened to boycott merchants who did not support freedom of choice, and claimed that many people weren’t attending their meetings because they had been “brainwashed by the leadership of Newnan and Coweta County.” The meetings got smaller and smaller, and the protests slowly fizzled. In the fall of 1971, the second year of integration, a black teen, Toni Grier, was elected Newnan High School homecoming queen.
For a guided tour, call 770-964-3301 or visit christiancity.org
(Located southwest of Atlanta -11 miles from Atlanta airport)