Interview with Bennie Gantt, March 3, 2023

Bennie Gantt was born in Comer, Georgia in 1937. His parents were sharecroppers for most of his life, but they also ran a small restaurant in Comer in the late 1940s. Gantt attended the Comer Colored School through 11th grade. Madison County built separate white and Black high schools one year after Brown V Board. There was one white county high school and two Black high schools on opposite ends of the county. Gantt attended the consolidated high school for African American students near Comer for just one day in 1955 before dropping out to work in Athens at a poultry plant and a tractor shop before ultimately settling into a long career in construction. He worked on St. Mary's Hospital and the Richard B. Russell Library as well as several projects in Atlanta and throughout the South. The Gantts are longtime residents of Madison County, and he lived for a time in a section of Comer near Arnold Bottoms Rd., locally known as Gantt Town.

2023-03-03

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73 minutes