Full Text of the Excerpt

JACQUELYN HALL:

I understand. So you ran for the Georgia legislature in 1966?

GRACE TOWNS HAMILTON:

'65.

JACQUELYN HALL:

'65. After the county-unit system was done away with and reapportionment?

GRACE TOWNS HAMILTON:

Well, there were several stages in that. First was getting rid of the county unit system, then there was the re-apportionment of the senate, then there was re-apportionment of the congressional districts, then there was re-apportionment of the house. In the state, re-apportionment of the senate came first, and then re-apportionment of the house. And when that got passed and the house was re-apportioned, I ran in one of the newly created districts.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you decide to launch into electoral politics?

GRACE TOWNS HAMILTON:

Just because I … see, the whole effort was to try to find good people to run for these new districts. See, Fulton County had been represented by three people, and when it was re-apportioned, we had twenty-four house districts. And twenty-six of that, the first re-apportionment, with five at-large and … how many single member districts there were… twenty, twenty-one single member districts. And so all of us who'd been interested in improving the participation of Negros in the political process were interested in trying to locate people, and I went to talk to another person who also ran for the first time who had run for something else, and I said, "Who are we going to get for this district, 112th?" And he said, he said, "Well, why don't you run?" And I really had never … I really hadn't thought about it. And so I said, "Well, I'll go think about it." And I did. And after all, I know as much about the district as anybody.