I Watched Atlanta Police Kill an Unarmed Black Man in 1966. It Changed My Life.

The Summerhill Riots of 1966 were the pivotal moment that set Columbus Ward, 72, on a lifelong path of community activism. He was an underclassman at Carver High School in Peoplestown on Sept. 6, 1966, when Atlanta police shot and killed an unarmed Black man named Harold Prather. This act of brutality caused racial tensions between law enforcement and the local Black community to boil over, leading to four days of unrest. Ward went on to work with the local Lutheran Church, civil rights leader Hosea Williams, and the local Black Panther Party to create change in his community. He recently revisited the moment he joined demonstrators in an act of civil disobedience, which he said changed his life, and reflected on how the modern fight for social justice has changed.

This account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The Black pastor said, “We’re gonna turn the car over.” I just showed up there wanting to see what was going on. The mayor ordered us to be tear-gassed. I found out later Harold Prather was actually my oldest sister’s brother-in-law. The police intended to kill Harold. That was my wake-up call to start fighting against injustice. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. But from then on, I always wanted to make sure I was fighting for the rights of people.

At that time, if you were Black, you just knew you had to be careful about anything you said or did around white folk — in particular, white police officers — that you’re gonna most likely be attacked. They’re going to treat you a particular way, to hurt you or to harm you.

I never did get a whole lot about Harold Prather, in terms of his lifestyle, what he did. I just know Harold’s death was the one that sparked that riot. That’s when Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panther Party was doing a lot of work. The Black Panthers had a house at the corner of Hill Street and Alma Street. Everybody in the neighborhood was fighting for this stuff.

I was what you call, I guess, a youth Black Panther. I did a lot of stuff with them before I came to the Emmaus House. We did field trips. I’d help them pass out food and stuff they had at the house, or clothes and stuff like that. I just did stuff with them because I thought that it was the right thing to do. I felt proud of being around Black men that could hold their heads up, talking about Black Power. I just felt so good about being a part of it.

When I finished high school, I moved into the Emmaus House. The founder came down to try to help bring about changes for poor, economically deprived citizens. We did a lot of work around organizing for the National Welfare Rights Organization, which has a substantial amount of history for fighting injustice. It was headed up by a young lady here, Ethel Mae Matthews. We also did a lot of protesting with the Rev. Joseph Boone and Hosea Williams, who were doing a lot of work in the city of Atlanta in particular, fighting places like different department stores that were just not treating people right. I participated in quite a few of those types of demonstrations. Father Austin Ford was the one that did a lot of work around trying to organize people about poverty issues and against the death penalty and fighting for prison rights and that sort of stuff. So I did a lot of work in those areas as part of my work at the Emmaus House.

Being Black in Atlanta, it’s not that much different now. Back then, we was basically fighting the white elite, or the white elected officials, the white department heads and stuff like that. Now we are having the same thing, but a lot of the elected officials — people running departments and running stuff — is Black. It’s just that they seem like they forgot where they came from, and they don’t seem to be open minded in terms of trying to make things better for those who don’t have it. I worry about that a whole lot. It’s all become more of a class issue than a race issue. We kind of hurt ourselves because of class. We think that you got to be of a certain class or have a certain education or so much wealth in order to benefit from the things that’s out here. That’s why we have to make sure that we help everybody become at the same level in terms of equity and equality that don’t really exist like it should. I still think they have a long way to go, and we’re not there yet.