On Father’s Day (6/18/2000), I took two of my children to my father’s grave, at Springfield Baptist Church (founded in 1865) in his hometown of Crawfordville, Georgia. (where Alexander H. Stephens State Park, which he was never able to visit during his life, is located.) I was trying to give my children a brief history of who he was from my own limited knowledge. I knew that he was the First Black Park Superintendent in Georgia and had built George Washington Carver State Park, opened in 1950, the first Negro State Park and the only State Park ever named for an African-American in Georgia. It is now operated by Bartow County as Bartow-Carver Park. He had leased the land from the Corps of Engineers with the intent of running a private resort like American Beach in Florida but could not get a license to operate it as such from Bartow County. The state of Georgia, while Herman Eugene Talmadge was Governor, made an offer to make the facility a State Park for Negroes, due to mounting protest from Black WWII Veterans and Civic groups. And he remained the Park Superintendent for 8 years, until he became ill in the fall  of 1958. The next superintendent was Mr. Clarence Benham, father of First Georgia Black Justice Robert Benham. This is the Park where Ray Charles and Little Richard visited and performed, Andrew Young and his family learned to water ski and Mrs. Coretta Scott-King and her family remember many weekend outings with Ebenezer Baptist Church. Shortly before WW II, my Daddy had purchased property in the city of Atlanta, and built a house on it, only to be barred by the Atlanta police, for two years, from moving into his house. He was told by the police that he had built his house on a 'white block' and could not move into it. This was when he was persuaded to join the military. After his military discharge, he filed a lawsuit against the city of Atlanta. He had found out, while in the military, about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Hansberry vs Lee.  (this ruling also inspired Lorraine Hansberry to write her play...) But the matter was settled out of Court when Mayor William B. Hartsfield (sending a car to pick him up and bring him to city hall) told him in no uncertain terms that if he would drop his suit, the race block system in Atlanta would be abolished. and at that meeting it was, opening the way for Mozley Park, Dixie Hills, Grove Park, Collier Heights and areas along Bankhead Highway to become integrated neighborhoods. It also paved the way for Lincoln Golf Course and Country Club to open in 1947 where world heavyweight champ (and our cousin?) Joseph Louis Barrow Sr. attended the opening ceremonies. I also remember around 1967 my family, with some sculpting/modeling done by Mr. Fritz P. Zimmer were engaged in casting plaster ornaments for a large project in Buckhead. Back in the 1920's, my father and his older brother George were plastering the walls, running cornice and installing ornaments in the Fox Theater during its construction. Having mastered plastering from previous work in Florida, they were the only Negroes working on Atlanta's Fox Theater in that capacity. but, in 1967, the project was a huge house and many African-American plasterers working for Atkinson Brothers Plastering Company (our Uncle Charles' business) worked on it. Only later did I learn that it was the new governor’s mansion, ordered built by Gov. Carl Sanders, and we were all shocked that the first governor to occupy the new mansion was Lester G. Maddox.