Activists Back in Cumming to Attend Church Services

Eight days after leading a 25,000-strong civil rights demonstration in all-white Forsyth County, the Rev. Hosea Williams returned here Sunday with a band of mostly black followers from Atlanta--this time not to protest but to pray.

Williams, trading his blue marching dungarees for a black Sunday suit, headed a group of 50 to 75 civil rights activists who arrived here in a 20-car entourage and then split up in teams to attend services at eight churches.

This time, they also encountered a dramatically changed atmosphere--one free of the rabble-rousing and violence that marred the protest march the previous weekend as a throng of more than 1,000 whites and Ku Klux Klan members waved Confederate flags and shouted: “Nigger, go home!”

Confederate Flags

The only signs of unwelcome Sunday were the outsized Confederate flags flying from a red pickup truck and a blue automobile that silently cruised the streets of downtown Cumming, the county seat and only incorporated city in the county.

Williams and his wife, Juanita, attended services at the First Baptist Church in Cumming with 15 followers, including two young children. Because they arrived late and the 800-capacity church was nearly filled, they were forced to sit in a balcony section by themselves off to one side of the pulpit.

But as he emerged from the hourlong service, Williams, an Atlanta city councilman and one-time aide to martyred civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told reporters: “I really felt at home. This has been a memorable time in my life. The sermon was very befitting to these times.”

The Rev. B. V. (Butch) Franklin, First Baptist’s pastor, made no specific reference to race relations in his sermon, but he told the congregation that “the commandment of this Scripture is to love and judge not.”

‘Different View’

In a message in Sunday’s church bulletin, Franklin said he looked forward to Williams’ visit because “he will get a completely different view of the attitudes of our city and our county.”

Delmas Hester, 79, a member of First Baptist for 15 years, said in an interview after the service: “I think the way this visit was conducted on both sides did a lot of good. I don’t think running up and down the street, whooping and hollering and throwing rocks, will solve the problem.”

Sheriff Wesley Walraven, speaking to reporters after the civil rights activists had left town, said there had been no incidents at any of the eight churches.

“I hope today you saw, really, what Forsyth County is,” he said. He said.