Ronnie Thompson (Georgia Politician) - Thompson and African Americans

Thompson and African Americans

Thompson chaired the Macon City Council Library Committee, which quietly opened services to African Americans. "Not a word was said about it. We just did it. No big to-do. No press releases to inflame folks. and we started putting branch libraries in different neighborhoods. Nothing racial about it," Thompson recalled.

Most African Americans in Macon, however, opposed the Thompson administration. In 1969, Thompson blocked Muhammad Ali from fighting at the Macon Coliseum, which Thompson had helped to complete, because Thompson objected to Ali's Conscientious Objector status during the Vietnam War.

When racial rioting broke out in Macon on June 20, 1970, Thompson issued "shoot-to-kill" orders to police to stop looting. He drove a National Guard tank onto a Macon elementary school campus to intimidate would-be criminals. He authorized billboards in Macon warning that armed robbers would be "shot on sight".

In midsummer of 1971, a racial crisis erupted when a black city employee was shot and killed by a white policeman, who a month later was cleared of involuntary manslaughter. Mayor Thompson imposed a 36-hour curfew after several suspected fire bombings. He fired a carbine in the air, heard over police radio, while he accompanied a police patrol. He further angered liberals by publicly discussing the "best type of bullet" to use against the criminal element. Critics called him "Machine Gun Ronnie", a sobriquet to which he did not object though he never handled a machine gun. In fact, he paid for his campaigns by selling memorabilia containing the name "Thompson" on model machine guns.

The Reverend Julius Caesar Hope (born 1932), a Macon black minister and the president of the Georgia NAACP, contended that African Americans in Macon were tired of living with unfulfilled promises for so long. Hope viewed Thompson as ambivalent toward blacks: "I think Mayor Thompson was a politician of expediency. I really don't think deep down within Ronnie Thompson was a racist." Macon lawyer Virgil Adams, who was a teenager at the time of the Thompson administration, alleged that Thompson "damaged Macon's image. When it got dark, you (blacks) needed to be off the street. Parents wouldn't let us out of the house at night for fear of being locked up, beaten by police, or shot."

Thompson, however, defends his mayoral record on race relations. "Race wasn't an issue until my opponent brought it in. My administration built three new hospitals. Jet airport, firehouses, integrated the police department, had black personnel in every department. We went eight years without a tax increase or bond issue. I had a biracial committee that met every month. Things like doctor's offices. Black patients had to go in a back door. We got it stopped. And the newspapers had a different edition for black subscribers. My committee talked to them, and they stopped it."

In a 1971 speech to the Macon Optimist Club, Thompson urged blacks to work hard. He noted that he is descended from "a laboring family from a mill town." Thompson said that he understands the discrimination of poverty and declared that "the best way that I know to fight poverty is to go to work." The speech brought a standing ovation from the Optimists. Thompson declared that the city would fight for its citizens and businesses.

Thompson's tough stance on crime was lauded by the national radio commentator Paul Harvey.