This new political power helped gain the hiring in 1948 of the first eight African-American police officers in Atlanta, the same year that the federal government began to integrate the armed services.

He passed a civil service exam and became a railway mail clerk for the Post Office in 1903, a position he held for 32 years.

They had coordinated the trip with the NAACP and kept Dobbs' role secret, as it was dangerous to challenge the Jim Crow customs and color line.

Dobbs, who passed the 61-year-old newspaperman off as a cousin from Pittsburgh doing field work for the NAACP, was Sprigle's guide, host and mentor.

Sprigle's 21-part syndicated newspaper series, entitled I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days, shocked the white North and started the first debate in the national media (print and radio) about the future of legalized segregation.