12. County Courthouse
Primus King (1900 – 1986) was a man with no formal education who ran a successful business for 30 years and was the central key figure in the fight for voting rights for African Americans in the state of Georgia. Primus King was born on February 5, 1900 in Hatchechubbee in Russell County, Alabama, to Ed and Lucy King. The King family moved to Columbus when Primus was a young boy. Young Primus never went to school, instead began working as a child to help his family. There weren’t many job options for African Americans in the segregated south. Primus worked many jobs, as a water boy bringing water to the workers that were building a cotton mill, to being a butler and chauffeur for wealthy white people in Columbus. During these years working for someone else and seeing the ill treatment of African Americans by his and other bosses, King decided to be his own boss. So with the money he had been saving, he bought the Barber Shop on 17th Street for 8.00. Without an education and not knowing how to cut hair, he ran a successful business for the next 30 years until he sold the barber shop and retired 1963 he sold the barber shop and retired.
The experiences he endured growing up during the years of segregation and oppression towards the African American community in Columbus would later cause King to volunteer to help Dr. Thomas Brewer and the others in demanding the right to vote for African Americans. King remembered one such experience he later recounted in an interview in 1979, that stood out when he decided to volunteer. King had went over to the restaurant called Jimbo’s to get some food but was kicked out for being black, and was told that if he wanted food he had to go around to the side window. When civil rights leader Dr. Thomas Brewer and the Columbus Chapter of the NAACP needed someone attempt to vote in the Democratic Party’s primary at the Muscogee County Courthouse on July 4, 1944, a significant date due to the anniversary of the United States fight for independence, King said “I will”.
Being denied his right to vote on July 4, 1944, King with the help of Dr. Thomas Brewer and the Columbus Chapter of the NAACP fought using the “law” to win the right for all African Americans. They decided to sue the Democratic Party for $5,000. In September 1945 the arguments in King v. Chapman began in a federal district court in Macon. Kings lawyers argued that their client's right to vote under the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Seventeenth amendment had been violated. King and his lawyers had won the case but the case ended up being appealed. On March 6, 1946, in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Louisiana, Judge Samuel H. Sibley asked him “Primus, do you want the right and privilege to vote? Do you want $5,000? PK said he stood there with tears running down his cheeks and said “Your Honor, I want the right and privilege to vote for my people”. This two year court battle was not just important for the African American community in Columbus, but for the entire state. African Americans were now finally had the right to vote in the state of Georgia.
For years to follow Primus King would tell young African Americans 18 and up to register and vote. “Cause without a ballot you become a slave to the man with it. “That is the weapon you got, it was given to you”.
Submission composed by Charles Elliott, April 10, 2017
Location:
References and Further Reading
Lloyd, Craig, Primus E. King 1900-1986 (2016), http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/primus-e-king-1900-1986
Grant, Judith. Columbus, Georgia. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2000
December 2000. "Reverend Primus King." Reflection. Preservation Division Georgia Department of Natural Resources
Davis, Paula A., Interview of Primus King (JULY 16, 1979) General Oral History Collections, Columbus State University Archives Columbus, Georgia
Breaking the White Primary: The Primus King Case. https://library.columbusstate.edu/displays/Primus.php