Growing up in Liberty County, Ralph Quarterman was a name people would hear often. He is usually referred to as the charter president of the Liberty County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the first Black man in the state of Georgia to own and operate a sawmill. However, his legacy extends far beyond those two roles.
New attention has been brought to his name because of a statue being built to honor Ralph Quarterman at the Liberty County Historic Courthouse. Once completed, this will be the first African-American statue on a county courthouse lawn in the state of Georgia, and perhaps the first in the South.
Born on Sept. 3, 1918, in the area now known as Walthourville, Ralph Waldo Quarterman was the son of Henry and Carrie Quarterman. He grew up in Liberty County, Ga and graduated from the Dorchester Academy in Midway and Georgia Normal College in Albany. He also attended Albany State College (now Albany State University) where he met his wife Willie Louise Quarterman. The couple moved back to Liberty County where he became a businessman and activist while Mrs. Quarterman excelled at a long career as an educator.
Their only child, Brenda Quarterman Withers, still lives in her childhood home on Dunlevie Road.
“My father would do anything for family and this community,” Mrs. Withers says. “He was such a giving person that we wouldn’t have sometimes because he would give to those in need.”
Another memory Mrs. Withers has of her father was traveling with him and her mother to Paschal’s in Atlanta to meet with civil rights leaders.
In 1952, he began organizing to charter the Liberty County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He needed 100 members to get the chapter created. He was only able to get 96 signatures, but approval was given to create the Liberty County Branch of NAACP. Mr. Ralph Quarterman was elected the first president of the organization on June 21, 1953 and served until 1961. The only remaining charter members are Mrs. Mamie Stevens Clay and Mr. George Varnedoe.
He also organized the Liberty County Cooperative Committee. This was a biracial organization in the community whose preamble read as follows: “We the undersigned citizens of Liberty County, Georgia hereby form, create, and organize the Liberty County Cooperative Committee for the purpose of continuing and promoting in a democratic manner the economic, social, and cultural welfare and well-being of all: the citizens of Liberty County. It shall be the primary purpose of this organization to participate in discussions and attempt to arrive at solutions to problems which would if unsolved, tend to cause friction and ill feeling between groups of the citizenry of Liberty County or deter the orderly progress of the promotions of the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the citizens of Liberty County.”
The issues that African-Americans were experiencing at that time led him to become an active member in the political process in Liberty County. He created The Liberty County Citizenship Council, which was a group of Blacks that formed to become politically involved and get Blacks out to vote. The group supported Ralph Quarterman’s nomination for Liberty County Commissioner in May 1960. He was the first African-American to run for political office in Liberty County since Reconstruction. On May 19, 1960, he published an open letter to the public in the Liberty County Herald pledging to improve the living conditions in the county on the following platform points: wider participation in the health and welfare program, making the county attractive to new industry, hard surfaced roads and paved streets, adequate drainage, adequate rural mail delivery, representation on all levels of city and county government for all people of Liberty County.
He was defeated receiving 1,198 votes against his opponent’s 1,920 votes. Jet Magazine featured Mr. Ralph Quarterman after the election because a Black man running for office was unheard of at that time and the fact that he owned two businesses when few Black-owned businesses existed in Liberty County was a great accomplishment.
He owned the Liberty Lumber Company, which was located on what is now Lewis Frasier Road near the Historic Dorchester Academy. He also owned a grocery store on Winder Road. He was a farmer as well harvesting livestock and crops.
He was recruited to Monrovia, Liberia in West Africa in 1961 by the Liberian-American Agricultural and Industrial Corporation to assist the Liberian Government in setting up sawmills throughout the country. They read about the election in Jet magazine and hired him to work for their lumber company. While there, Mr. Ralph Quarterman organized five sawmills.
In 1962, he returned from Africa due to being sick with malaria. He continued on with his work at the sawmill, farm and grocery store as well as leading the movement for Civil Rights and Equality.
Mr. Ralph Quarterman died of a kidney infection on May 28, 1964 at age 46. At his home-going service, W.W. Law, a noted historian, civil rights leader, and past president of the Savannah Branch of the NAACP said, “The tallest tree in the forest has fallen.”
Georgia State Representative Al Williams also spoke at the home-going celebration for Ralph Quarterman. He was 16 years old at the time and said the moment changed his life forever.
“I spoke at his funeral representing the NAACP Youth Council for the State of Georgia,” Williams recalled. “That funeral changed my life because I wrote my entire speech. I was supposed to end with the last 13 lines from William Cullen Bryant’s ‘Thanatopsis’ but when W.W. Law spoke right before me, it motivated me to speak from my heart. I put down my paper and I haven’t written a speech since 1964.”
Rep. Al Williams is the first African American from Liberty County to be elected state representative since Reconstruction and one of the founding members of the Young Democrats of Georgia. Williams strives to share the legacy of Mr. Ralph Quarterman in any way he can. In 2017, he recommended a statute be built at the Liberty County Courthouse in honor or Mr. Ralph Quarterman. In 2019, he partnered with the Liberty County NAACP and began working on a plan to get a monument built and erected.
The Liberty County Board of Commissioners approved the installation of a statute in August 2019. Rep. Williams says he is grateful for the unanimous vote and support of the Liberty County commissioners.