Liberty County plans to honor civil rights pioneer Ralph Waldo Quarterman with statue

Ralph Waldo Quarterman’s modest tombstone in Baconton records his birth and death dates, but it’s the time in between that was monumental.

Born Sept. 3, 1918, in Walthourville, Quarterman was a child in 1925 when the Liberty County United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a Confederate soldier statue at the county courthouse. Quarterman died on May 28, 1964 — just 22 days before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and 35 days before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law.

And in between, Quarterman cleared a path for Liberty County’s Black citizens to run businesses and hold public office. 

Quarterman owned a grocery store in that part of the county where Walthourville and Allenhurst now meet. He was Georgia’s first Black sawmill owner and helped build 5 more sawmills in Liberia. He also owned a poultry farm.

In 1958, after the state voted to expand the county Board of Commissioners from 3 to 5 seats, he was the first Black resident to run for public office in Liberty County since Reconstruction.

Quarterman also founded the Liberty County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — a rare rural branch in its time — as well as the biracial Liberty County Cooperative Committee, and the Liberty County Citizenship Council, a group aimed at getting out the Black vote. 

On Feb. 7, city, county, and state officials joined Quarterman’s family at the Liberty County Courthouse Annex to unveil a conceptual bust of the statue by sculptor Kevin Pullen of St. Simons Island. 

The statue will stand in front of the Historic Courthouse – the same place where, his daughter Brenda Withers said, an effigy of Quarterman had been hung from a tree when he dared to run for county chairman in 1960.

“I mean, that was a building that we weren’t even allowed to go into,” said Lisa Thomas, Liberty County Branch NAACP president. “And there he’ll stand.”

The only statue at the courthouse now is that of a symbolic Confederate soldier, a mass-produced relic of the early 20th century. The statue’s base lists several local Confederate units from Liberty County.

‘Some of what we love’

State Rep. Al Williams (D-168), Liberty County’s first Black elected official to hold that title since Reconstruction, and Quarterman’s mentee, got the Board of Commissioners to approve the statue six years ago.

“When the vision came, it was very plain not to try and tear down a statue,” Williams said, “but to build another statue. Not to tear it down. Because as hard as it would be to understand, there are those that love Confederate statues, I don’t want to tear down what they love. I want to add some of what we love.”

Hinesville Mayor Karl Riles added, “In a time where all the rage is tearing statues down, we in a place called Liberty are putting a statue up.”

Carrying Quarterman’s briefcase

Williams was 13 when he met Quarterman. He was drawn to the businessman and would walk from his house to the NAACP meetings Quarterman chaired, then literally carry his briefcase for him.

“He named me first chair of the Youth Council,” he said, adding that State Rep. Edna Branch Jackson (D-165), Savannah’s first African-American woman mayor, was another teenager Quarterman had inspired to run for public office.

When Quarterman died a few years later, Williams recalled he was “Shattered. Shattered.”  

Chance meeting sparks statue drive

Williams and Pullen met during plans for a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Atlanta, and agreed that a Quarterman statue was necessary.

When Pullen first heard Quarterman’s name, he said “‘Who?’ Because I didn’t know….And that’s part of this process we need to do. Because we need to answer ‘Who?’ That’s what this is about…. We give answers. ‘This is the man that brought a sawmill to this town. This is a man who was sought from Africa to build sawmills for them.” 

A bust of the statue in progress is part of a display, curated by historian Hermina Glass-Hill, inside the lobby of the Liberty County Courthouse Annex in downtown Hinesville.

‘My daddy was a courageous man’

Withers said, “He’s always just been Dad to me. But when I see all the people in this room that came to see him and represent him and show him love, I realize he was really something else. My daddy was a courageous man. You know, you say ‘courage’ but you don’t know what it takes.”

Glass-Hill praised Quarterman’s family for having preserved photos and especially documents from his life. Other artifacts related to Quarterman’s life are in peril.

The store, once the beating heart of Allenhurst’s Black community, is falling into decay next to the house where Quarterman’s parents lived.

The metal roof is partially peeled back.. People have broken windows and tried to remove boards from the doors. The gasoline pump and other artifacts have been taken from the site. 

No plans have been announced to save Quarterman’s store. However, fundraising for the $125,000 statue is ongoing. No date for the statue’s installation has been set yet.