Henry Ford Gravitt has been mayor of this town 40 years, so long he remembers too well the worst of it, when civil rights marchers in the late 1980s clashed with the Ku Klux Klan here. The marchers, led by Atlanta City Councilman Hosea Williams, believed more blacks should live in then almost all-white Forsyth County.
“People weren’t like that around here back then, and they’re not like that around here now,” Gravitt said, asked about that clash and how an influx of minorities has changed the county and his town since then.
“All those problems were caused by outsiders,” said Gravitt, a little extra energy in his voice.
Two blocks from his office are the signs of Forsyth’s evolution: Two Hispanic groceries, two Hispanic restaurants, a Hispanic clothing boutique, coffee shop, florist and bakery. But other signs of increased minority influence and representation in the county are not so obvious — or seem not to exist.
In 1990, only 14 blacks, 635 Hispanics and 81 Asians lived in Forsyth — less than 2 percent of the population, then about 44,000. Today, according to 2009 census estimates, 7,289 blacks, 15,341 Hispanics, and 8,945 Asians live in the county — about 18 percent of a population that has almost quadrupled, to 174,520.
Still, of the city of Cumming’s 125 workers, one is black, two are Hispanic, and there are no Asians. Forsyth County, including the Sheriff’s Office, employs 1,400 people, 7 percent of them minorities. County schools employ 4,200 people, 7 percent of them minorities, also.
The disproportion shifts the other way when it comes to school students. The system has 23.3 percent minority students, five points higher than the county’s minority population.
Other metro Atlanta counties have seen demographic shifts over the past two decades, some far larger. Only Fulton County, where the percentage of whites declined from 46.8 percent to 42.9 percent since 1990, has remained relatively stable. In Clayton the percentage of minorities jumped from 28.7 percent in 1990, to 80.1 percent. In Gwinnett the minority population has boomed since 1990, going from 10.6 percent to 50.8 percent. Cobb has gone from 13.8 percent to 42 percent minority. DeKalb has gone from 48 percent to 69.5 percent minority.
But unlike some other counties, the changes in Forsyth are seen less in the ranks of public officials than in the community, where minorities attend churches and Hispanic workers gather along Ga. 9 south of Cumming looking for day labor.
On weekends, thousands of Hispanics, and some longtime residents, flock to Cumming to shop.
Such a thing was almost unimaginable two decades ago when the 1987 marches became national news when rocks and bottles were thrown at a group led by Williams. Coming 23 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, the episode established Forsyth as one of the last battlegrounds in the long arc of the civil rights movement.
Time and the metro area’s economic boom diminished the damage to Forsyth’s image. People moved to the county, about 35 miles north of downtown Atlanta, for the abundant undeveloped land, more house and more lot for the buck, and the county’s proximity to the North Georgia mountains and the shores of Lake Lanier.
Jernice Currie, who is black and works for the Forsyth County Chamber of Commerce, moved to Forsyth 11 years ago to escape the higher property taxes and home prices of Alpharetta, about 10 miles south on Ga. 400.
She didn’t know the history of the county until she attended an orientation meeting with Leadership Forsyth, a group formed after the marches to mend relations between groups in the county and repair Forsyth’s image.
“I’ve never had a problem, as far as anybody being racial, or just being stupid,” she said. “I’ve never had a problem with the sheriff’s department or the police department. Never.”
Edward DuBose, president of the Georgia chapter of the NAACP, doesn’t live in Forsyth and still sees it differently. His group has tried over the years to establish a chapter in Forsyth.
“But we can never get any traction there,” DuBose said. “In my mind, the demographics of Forsyth have changed, and things have moved a little bit. But a lot of the attitudes are about the same as when Hosea marched there.”
Adolfo Castaneda, the manager of La Zacatecana grocery, a few blocks from Cumming City Hall, said he’s had no trouble at the store with locals. They are friendly as they shop for produce and cuts of meat they can’t find at the Publix up the road. But Castaneda said it took some adjusting when he moved here nine years ago from California.
“People were not nice, especially in places like the court, City Hall or driver’s license office,” he said.
Three years ago, Forsyth Sheriff Ted Paxton applied to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for permission to enforce immigration laws under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that would allow the county, in effect, to begin deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants. The application was rejected because the county didn’t have adequate detention facilities.
Felipe Lora remembers getting into fights with whites in the early 1990s when he was one of the first Hispanics to attend, and graduate from, Central High School.
After living in the county 23 years and becoming fluent in English, Lora, who works as a translator for the Cumming Police Department, said he rarely has problems with locals.
“I really think they have accepted other cultures here. But I also think there are old-fashioned people who live here who will never accept us. I say about 80 percent accept us. About 10 percent will never accept us. The other 10 percent haven’t made up their minds yet.”
Virgilio Perez Pascoe, who moved to Forsyth six years ago from Golden, Colo., and became politically active, said the only thing holding minorities back in Forsyth is lack of involvement.
“Right now, of the 15,000 Hispanics who live here, only about 1,500 are registered voters,” he said. “Of the 7,000 blacks, only about 2,000 are registered. Of the 8,000 Asians, only about 1,600 are registered. To make a change, you have to change that.”
Soomy Sim, a Korean who moved to the county from Gwinnett four years ago to start a family and get a better deal on a house, said she quickly fit into the community, but now she’s probably going to move.
“Everybody has been nice,” she said. “But I am from New York. I’m used to having a lot more diversity. It seems like it is too country up here.” She said she wants more variety in restaurants and to live closer to Atlanta friends.
County Commissioner Patrick Bell said he hears the talk, most it from outsiders and reporters, about race and Forsyth, but in his mind it’s beside the point.
“We are an extremely conservative county,” he said. “You don’t see a lot of people out picketing and carrying signs. They go to work, go to church, go to parks to play baseball, spend time with their families. They don’t have time to worry about racial issues. And they don’t need to worry about racial issues.”
Mayor Gravitt said it’s obvious Forsyth is in transition from the days when he could name everyone who walked through the door of City Hall, almost all of them white.
“We have about 80,000 registered voters in Forsyth County, and in the last election, 20,000 of them voted for Obama,” he said. “That tells you all you need to know about the changing demographics and culture of Forsyth County.”
Linda Carolina Perez contributed to this report.
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