John L. McCown

John McCown was born on November 18th, 1934, in the Peedee region of South Carolina, just Northwest of Myrtle Beach. His father died in a traffic accident when John was just three years old. Not able to support her family, his mother moved to Harlem for better work opportunities and John moved in with his grandparents. Growing up in the segregation era, McCown attended the all-black Loris Training School where he would join the basketball team and eventually become class president. Missing his mother, it wasn’t long before he moved to Harlem to be her.

McCown decided to join the Air Force and moved to Colorado. While stationed in Colorado Springs, he organized the city’s first civil rights demonstration following the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, where four young black girls were killed and 22 others were injured. Considered courageous and outspoken about his opinions, he gained favor with the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was appointed military advisory to Edward Bradford, president of the Colorado Springs chapter. Throughout the 60s, he advocated for the abolishment of military bias towards blacks throughout the country.

After serving nearly ten years in the Air Force, he received a general discharge and made his way to the South to join Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Selma, Alabama, where massive marches were being organized due to voting restrictions placed on black Americans. While in Alabama, McCown also befriended Stokely Carmichael, who believed less in nonviolence and interracial alliances, and more on black militancy. Carmichael would go on to coin the term “black power” and help rural African-Americans outside of Selma to form the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an all-black, independent political group that became known as the Black Panther Party. Inspired by Carmichael, McCown would eventually rely on strong arm and intimidation tactics. While traveling throughout the South, he became involved in multiple rallies and protests, and would later brag that he was the one who pushed Mayor Ivan Allen off the car during the Atlanta riots in 1966. He would go on to be selected executive director of the Georgia Council on Human Relations (GCHR), a non-profit and biracial organization working against prejudice and discrimination due to race, religion, ethnicity, and nationality.

McCown eventually made his way to Hancock County, regarded as one of the more tolerable communities towards blacks. The Ku Klux Klan never had an influence in the county as the film Birth of the Nation, a movie that portrayed blacks as unintelligent and aggressive towards white women and the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, never played in the county’s only movie theater. Hancock County would become the only county in Georgia without a lynching. Despite this and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965, schools, restaurants and water fountains were still segregated. White county leaders would also vote against any improvements that benefitted the black community. McCown decided that the only way change could occur was that the black community needed to be more involved in the political process, but there needed to be a black majority on the county commission to do that. In 1972, his idea was realized when he helped elect blacks into fourteen of the county’s eighteen posts. It was also the first time Hancock County had a black majority in control of the school board.

In 1971, McCown was questioned by members of the GCHR on some financial inconsistencies, followed by his resignation as executive director. Accounts were audited and what was found were some questionable land deals which resulted in an undocumented $50,000 for ECCO, and a loss of over $290,000 in the catfish farm with over $120,000 paid toward travel and consultant fees.

In the summer of 1974, McCown was jailed for unlawful assembly, failure to disperse and obstruction of justice. With McCown in jail, violence swept through Sparta as 600 protestors converged on the jail. During this time, there were also two shotgun attacks; one at the home of a former policeman and one at a store owned by the brother of Police Chief Garrett. McCown would later lead a march through downtown Sparta to the Sparta Baptist Church. Armed with guns, they forced the members of the congregation out, barricaded the doors, and held their own service. Following the service, they left the church and lay in the middle of the highway blocking all traffic. McCown would later tell a reporter from the Augusta Chronicle, “I’m not a violent man but if someone stands in my way, I believe I should kill them.” He would follow that up when, standing with multiple pistols in his belt shouted to television cameras, “I’ll destroy the town of Sparta, I don’t give a damn about whites.”

A subsequent investigation found that McCown had brought in over $8.7 million in grant money in Hancock County. Much of it was squandered off due to poor planning, mismanagement, and overspending. With the ongoing investigation, the Ford Foundation which provided grants to ECCO announced they would no longer be funding them. When attempting to post bail for two members of his group, McCown found that he had a negative net worth. A few months later on January 31, 1976, all employees of ECCO were terminated as the Office of Economic Opportunity, which also provided grants to ECCO, had run out of money.

The night before on January 30, 1976, after receiving news that funding had run out, McCown spent the night drinking with friends at the ECCO owned night club. Deciding to go for a quick flight, McCown drove the three men to Cessna 182 single-engine plane. Not owning a pilot’s license, he simply took off. Within minutes from takeoff, the planes plunged into the pine forest, killing McCown and two of the men; the third man was thrown out of the plane and was found alive. McCown was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.198, nearly twice the legal limit to drive a car in Georgia. The National Transportation Safety Board also found no malfunctions or and mechanical failures in the plane. Questions were raised as to how McCown came into ownership of the aircraft. The plane was found to have been registered to a black college in Mississippi, which had given McCown an honorary degree. Logs showed the aircraft was donated to the college and no connections to McCown were found. Regardless of McCown’s death, the investigation into ECCO continued. Over a dozen individuals were indicted, all of whom pleaded down and served minimal sentences, returning to their government jobs within the county.

John McCown is buried behind the Birdsong house in Mayfield, his grave now tended to by locals. The house is currently abandoned and is planned to be torn down in the future. It’s undeniable how much John McCown helped the black community of Hancock County, but his true motives and methods are still considered questionable and controversial.

https://autopsyofarchitecture.com/john-mccown-house/