Remember when… Georgia inmates escaped, visited Governor’s Mansion

Welcome to Keep in mind When, a semi-regular function the place we revisit the largely forgotten unusual, uplifting, pivotal or baffling moments from Atlanta’s historical past.

In April 1967, 4 inmates escaped from a jail work camp in Wilkinson County.

• Their vacation spot: an open home on the Governor’s Mansion in Atlanta to ask Gov. Lester Maddox to enhance situations on the Central Georgia jail.

Particulars: After ready consistent with “one thing like 4,000 people,” in accordance with TIME Journal, a lady whispered to the primary woman that the boys — recognized in a single report as Booker T. Cary, MacArthur Davis, Douglas Might and Henry Lewis Jackson — had been escaped convicts. And certainly one of them was her son.

• The staunch segregationist governor invited the boys, all of whom had been Black, inside and heard accusations of damaged bogs, overcrowded barracks and bored guards threatening to shoot inmates within the legs.

Maddox — finest recognized for utilizing an ax deal with to run off Black folks from his Dwelling Park restaurant — referred to as for “probably the most thorough investigation within the historical past of the state,” per an April 17, 1967 article within the Macon Information.

• “A [n-word] will inform a lie,” R.T. Bridges, the warden of the county-run camp, advised the newspaper. “Let ’em examine. Ship the governor. I am prepared for him.”

Wilkinson weeks later opted to close down the camp and switch prisoners elsewhere quite than pay for upgrades. Within the following months, state officers would order different county camps to make enhancements.