In 1965, I joined SCLC/SCOPE and traveled from my home school, the University of Illinois in Urbana, to Greene County, Alabama. I spent the summer in Eutaw, doing voter registration work with local leaders like Reverent Thomas Gilmore and Reverend Branch. Rev. Gilmore went on to run for County Sherrif in 1966.
I remember being asked to be a poll watcher and to follow the ballots on their trip from the country schoolhouse polling station to the county courthouse when the polls closed at 9 PM. The ballots never made it there, I got lost, and Gilmore lost that election — but won the new election that was called because of the fraud, and became the first Black sherrif in the South since reconstruction!
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