Emerging From The Shadows: New Sounds Like Hate podcast episode tells
story of blind former wrestler who fights to uphold voting rights for
people with disabilities in Georgia
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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
Growing up Black and blind in a small Georgia farming town in the
1960s, Gaylon and Stancil Tootle learned early: Rise up or the world
will keep you down.
The brothers, who have the same congenital cataracts that blinded
their mother, could see little more than shadows. Their father,
Greeley Tootle, was blind too, his sight lost to gunfire when he was
18. Their hometown, Glenville, was segregated, with a balcony in the
movie theater for Black patrons and a back door rule for Black clients
at businesses. In the town hall, everyone in power was white. In the
fields, everyone hauling watermelons, harvesting onions and hanging
tobacco leaves was Black.
But the Tootle family did not believe in living in the shadows.
Greeley Tootle used his memory, his wits and his knack for perceiving
patterns to work in the fields alongside sighted hands. At home, he
taught the boys, along with their four siblings, to stand up for
themselves. When Gaylon Tootle learned that a Black boy kicked off the
school bus for fighting after a racial slur was thrown his way, his
father successfully petitioned the school board to allow the student
to ride the bus again.
When campaign season came around, white politicians courted Tootle
- and the votes he could bring them. When a Black state senator
came to town in 1979 to protest inhumane conditions at a nearby
prison, local leaders refused to talk to him. Greeley Tootle invited
him to his home instead, to meet with the Black community.
Still, Greeley Tootle understood the limitations of home. When Gaylon
was 6, his parents put him on a bus to Macon, Georgia, setting aside
their yearning to keep him at their side for the opportunity to secure
him - and later his brother - an education at the Georgia
Academy for the Blind.
"They recognized that living in that small, rural town was not
going to help us," said Gaylon Tootle, now 62. He said his
parents wanted the boys at a place where they could explore the wider
world, learn Braille and most of all learn to be proud of who they
are.
"It was hard. My mother cried when they put me on the bus. But
my father always stressed that this is not where you want to be. He
was the driving force in helping us get out of there. He always told
us we can live the life we want."
Today, Tootle lives the life he wants. He has a marriage he calls
"a fairy tale." He has children, grandchildren and a
career standing up for people. But his path has been arduous, his days
are filled with obstacles, and his experience is bringing light to a
new struggle as he fights for others with disabilities whose voting
rights are being shredded by a new law in Georgia. His story is among
those told in the premiere episode of a new season of the Southern
Poverty Law Center's Sounds Like Hate
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podcast.
READ MORE
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