On March 31, 1921, a deadly tornado ripped through Albany, Georgia, killing one person and injuring at least 60 others. The next day, Augusta merchants presented a plan to Postmaster J. C. McAuliffe to have carriers deliver all mail to intended addressees, thereby eliminating the need for independent porters and deliverymen. For the first time in the history of Augusta, baseball fans could see every game played by their beloved Tigers via tape delay. Baseball matinees of the games were shown downtown at the Federation of Trades Labor Hall. Augusta’s prominence as a winter colony for wealthy northerners was in full swing and the real estate market was booming.
A campaign for Georgia Tech was underway. Education was needed so that Georgians would not have to continue shipping their valuable natural resources out of state for manufacturing. Georgia sought to transition past its reliance on cash crops. The trustees of the University of South Carolina modified entrance regulations to require students to declare allegiance to a state statute prohibiting Greek letter fraternities at the university. In Mobile, Alabama, Coach Cozy Dolan of the New York Giants and Umpire Lauzon were arrested for fighting during a baseball game after Lauzon swung on Dolan and lunged at him with a knife.
A headline on the front page of the New York Age read, “Georgia White Planter Holding Men in Peonage—Killed Eleven, Deaths of 11 Negroes Charged to Employer.”1 John Williams, a white plantation owner near Covington, Georgia, had enslaved twelve black men as peon workers on his plantation. Gus Chapman, one of the men held against his will and forced to work for free, escaped to Atlanta and told Bureau of Investigation agents about his indentured colleagues, terrible beatings, and whippings. Agents visited Williams’ plantation but the men, frightened for their lives, denied Chapman’s horrid story. After the agents departed, Williams destroyed the evidence by killing the 11 black men, demanding some of them bludgeon the others to death with axes. He hid the evidence, burying bodies on his property and chaining the bodies of others together, weighting them with rocks, and dropping them in local rivers.
Although Williams was indicted for the murder of all 11 men, he was only tried on one. At the time, white men were not usually convicted of murder for killing a black person in the Deep South. Astonishingly, a jury of 12 white men found Williams guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison. As horrible as it was, the case would help pave the way to eradicate the practice of peonage and white justice.
Beau Jack, c. 1941 (courtesy Bruce Kielty).
Childhood
In Burke County, Georgia, a little baby boy was born. The date was April 1, 1921, and the infant’s name was Sidney Rogers Walker (1921–2000). Family life was rough. Sidney’s mother, Lilly Scott, and father, Willie Walker, split up after he was born and took Sidney to Augusta, where he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Evie Dixon,2 on a farm a couple of miles south of town.
Sidney’s mother and father formally divorced when he was six years old. His mother moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, and Sidney rarely saw his father. Willie Walker was always in and out of trouble. Although not convicted, he was twice indicted for assault with intent to murder. He was also arrested for stealing a case of cigars from a freight car. Trouble seemed to follow Walker all the way to his untimely death. Sidney’s father died from a bullet wound to his abdomen in an altercation over a dollar bill. The day was Sidney’s 18th birthday.
Cotton was king in Georgia, but the previous arrival of the boll weevil had taken its toll on cotton farms. Georgia also suffered a three-year drought beginning in 1925, making life even harder for small farmers. Cotton prices were falling with the introduction of man-made fabrics. In rural areas, blacks made less than half the income of their white counterparts. Many blacks were forced off their land, leading to massive migrations to urban areas or to industrial areas in the North. The forthcoming Great Depression only made daily struggles worse. Life on the farm was grueling. It was especially difficult for black families.
Not only was it hard for blacks to survive economically, but racism was rampant in Augusta. Blacks were banned from public places frequented by whites, except if they were serving on the staff. Jim Crow laws ensured separate facilities and continual segregation. The local newspaper even had a separate page for news about black people.
Sidney struggled as a child to help his grandmother with the household and farm. He spent countless hours hoeing and picking cotton in the fierce heat. During the summer, in his spare time, Sidney scoured the briars, picking blackberries. He then walked around selling quarts of blackberries to white landowners for a quarter. He also helped out on his Uncle Jesse’s hog farm. Digging scraps out of garbage cans, Sidney put them on a wagon and wheeled them to his uncle’s hogs.
Instead of an education, Sidney learned the art of shoe shining at an early age to help his grandmother. When he was eight years old, Sidney would wake before dawn and walk to downtown Augusta in hopes of earning money shining shoes. He gathered his rags, horsehair brush, and tins of polish, placed them in his shoeshine box, and walked three and a half miles from his grandmother’s house to the corner of Ninth and Broad streets in downtown. Sidney strategically chose this specific spot, because it was on this corner that cotton farmers entered the city to sell their crop. Near the intersection, there was also a Walgreen’s Drug Store, Bowen’s Hardware, Green H. L. Department store, and the Quality Shop, where men shopped for clothing. It was a prime spot for shoeshines.
Broad Street (south side), between Fifth and Eighth streets, Augusta, Georgia, c. 1936 (Library of Congress).
Sidney, short and small in stature, was a mild-mannered young boy. Not disposed to conflict, he was pressed to acquire fighting skills at an early age. Other kids resented Sidney’s hardworking character and the money he made as a bootblack. Unfortunately, success made him a target of older kids. One afternoon after shining shoes, Sidney was surrounded by five older white boys who demanded his pocket change. Sidney respectfully refused, but the leader of the gang threatened to beat him up if he did not comply. Confronting five bullies, Sidney reluctantly yielded the $1.90 from his pockets.
His day’s earnings gone, he was so distraught that he went home in tears. Instead of comforting Sidney when he came back, his grandmother, a harsh disciplinarian, showed him no sympathy. Determined to teach him a lesson, she made him pull up his pants legs and then beat him with a switch saying, “You better fight till the blood runs out your shoes…. No Walker is supposed to be runnin’ nowhere.”3
It was a harsh lesson, but one that Sidney would not forget. Having successfully bullied Sidney for his money, the group of boys came back a week later demanding Sidney’s earnings. Instead of backing down as he had previously done, Sidney confronted the leader, sucker punched him and smashed his head against the ground. Defeated, the boys departed, and Sidney kept his money. When he returned home and told his grandmother what transpired, she declared him “‘reborn,’ and renamed him ‘Beau Jack,’” a name that he would proudly use for the rest of his life.
Young Sidney had more obstacles to overcome. At the age of nine, Sidney’s life was almost lost. On the cold winter evening of February 15, 1931, Sidney and his younger brother, John Henry Walker, were walking home on New Savannah Road in south Augusta. As they walked by a local slaughterhouse, J. Shapiro & Sons, the night watchman, Tom Burton, fired upon the boys with his shotgun. One of the shots struck Sidney, spreading birdshot in his chest. He was rushed to University Hospital where he was listed as being in “fair” condition. In his story to Sheriff L. H. Wilkins, Burton claimed that he thought the boys were stealing coal. “When I shouted at the boys, they ran, so I shot one of the pests.”4 Doubting Burton’s story, the sheriff locked Burton up in the county jail and charged him with assault with intent to murder.
Years later, when Beau underwent an X-ray as part of his physical for induction into the Army, it showed “a pattern of .22 birdshot, about No. 8 spread over an area the size of your hat” in his chest.5 Beau spun a yarn to explain the birdshot. “My daddy shot me a long time ago with a shot-gun while we were out rabbit hunting. I guess I was about eight or nine. It was a long time ago. They wanted to cut them out, but I knew that’d hurt, so I wouldn’t let ’em. I don’t feel them when I fight….”6 Why Beau spun that tale, no one knows. His father was never a significant part of his life.
Sidney’s grandmother, on the other hand, was an enormous influence on his life. She taught Sidney manners and how to live humbly. She instilled character into Sidney. She made him promise her that he would never smoke or drink and that he would work hard. She told him to always aim to do right and get along with everybody. Throughout his life, Sidney respectfully honored his grandmother’s request.
Tragedy struck Sidney when he was nine years old. His grandmother called him to her side. Little did Sidney know the significance of what she had to say to him. He thought she needed him to do a chore. As she sat in her rickety old rocking chair, gently rocking back and forth, she said, “Sidney, don’t cry, but I am going away to be with the Lord.” With tears filling his eyes, Sidney recalled, “She sent me to the kitchen for a bowl of soup and when I came back the Lord had stole her away.”7
Sidney’s rock of strength had been taken home to the heavens above. It would always be a moment of misery and tragedy for Sidney. He was frustrated and lost. Sidney had grown up so fast, and now he seemed to have lost everything. Instead of self-pity, he remembered the vigor that his grandmother instilled in him and determination set in for the young lad.
Following his grandmother’s death, Sidney and his brother went to live with their grandmother Lulu H. Walker in the house she shared with their Uncle David and Aunt Pearl. Not far from his grandmother’s house, they also lived on a small farm in south Augusta.
1. “Georgia White Planter Holding Men in Peonage—Killed Eleven; Deaths of 11 Negroes Charged to Employer,” New York Age, April 2, 1921, 1.
2. In other accounts, his grandmother is referred to as Evie Mixom.
3. Bill Plaschke, “After the Punch Is Gone,” Fort Lauderdale News, June 28, 1982, 59.
4. “Watchman Shoots Negro Boy Here,” Augusta Chronicle, February 16, 1931, 1.
5. Harry Gage, “The Sports Gage,” Augusta Chronicle, April 5, 1946, 14.
6. Ibid.
7. Oscar Fraley, “Back to the ‘Shine’ Box for Ex-Champ,” Muncie Evening Press, July 10, 1957, 19.