As the 1960s dawned, Southwestern Georgia’s Terrell County was already a locus of voting registration advocacy. A small, rural county northwest of Albany, Georgia, Terrell was the location of the first federal voting suit filed under the 1957 Civil Rights Act. The Terrell order eventually – and largely unsuccessfully – compelled county authorities to approve the registrations of qualified Black residents.
At the time of the order, 95% of the county’s eligible white voters were registered. By comparison, only 1.3% of Black residents were registered – a total of 51 people.
A primary defendant in the voting rights cases was the Sheriff of Terrell County, Zachary Taylor “Z.T.” Mathews (in some sources spelled “Matthews”). Around 70 years old in 1960, Mathews had enforced white rule in Terrell since the early 1940s. His nephew, M.E. Mathews, also a defendant, served as Chief Registrar of the county and as a Deputy Sheriff.
Even before the 1960 voting suit, Sheriff Mathews was under scrutiny for his potential involvement in a fatal act of police brutality. In April 1958, Terrell County deputies and officers from the local town of Dawson arrested James Brazier, a Black man who had allegedly interfered with his father’s DUI arrest.
Five days after he was arrested, Brazier died from brain damage and a fractured skull. It was unclear when the fatal blows were struck, but they were likely on the first night that Brazier was in custody, where inmates alleged that they heard Brazier carried out of his cell, saw him bloodied upon return, and heard Mathews asking officers excitedly about the beating.
Brazier’s widow Hattie claimed that local law enforcement had been after Brazier ever since he had purchased a Chevrolet Impala, and that officers had pulled him over routinely and even beaten him before.
In a June 1958 Washington Post story on Brazier’s death that introduced many national readers to Terrell County, Mathews openly espoused his belief in intimidation as an effective means of quelling moves toward racial equality: “There’s nothing like fear to keep n___ in line. I’m talking about ‘outlaw’ n___. And we always tells them there are four roads leading out of Dawson in all directions and they are free to go anytime they don’t like it here.”
The U.S. Commision on Civil Rights investigated Brazier’s death and took testimony from Hattie that Sheriff Mathews had threatened her when she asked questions about her husband’s death. “I oughta slap your damn brains out,” Mathews said, according to Hattie’s testimony. “A n___ like you I feel like slapping them out…I’m gonna carry the South’s order out like it oughta be done. ”