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 podcast.

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