[3] By his own admission, Thompson was raised as a segregationist until he was 11-years old, when he encountered a black boy who was crying because he was not allowed to use a whites-only bathroom at a rest area in Sparta, Georgia.

[1] However, Thompson still became a regional household name, especially in Georgia and North Carolina, due to his series of gospel music shows, which were broadcast on local television stations throughout the 1960s.

[1] In 1960, then-Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver publicly praised Thompson for holding several live gospel shows at a state mental hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Both Brown and Thompson had grown up in Augusta and worked as shoe shiners as kids in their hometown but didn't meet until they each had moved to Macon.

Prior to running for office, Louisiana Governor Jimmy Davis advised Thompson that the key to a successful political career was to "sing softly and carry a big guitar.

[3] This time, Ronnie Thompson defeated incumbent alderman Bert Hamilton in the nonpartisan city election to win the seat on the council.

Otis Redding and Phil Walden, the founder of Macon-based Capricorn Records, gave Thompson space in the Redwal Music Building on Cotton Avenue for use as a campaign headquarters.

[2] He won re-election to a second term in 1971 when he defeated Democrat F. Emory Greene, a Bibb County commissioner and former member of the Georgia House of Representatives.

When Thompson was sworn in as mayor shortly after the 1967 election, he presided over a city still in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the racial tensions that gripped the South at the time.

[3] However, in 1970, Thompson issued a controversial "shoot to kill" for city police against an upcoming demonstration by the Black Liberation Front, which planned to picket downtown stores, citing the need to combat "lawlessness and anarchy.

[1] Critics, including other elected officials in Macon's city government, attacked the idea, noting that it could inflame the present racial tensions.

In another memorable episode, Thompson authorized the city to acquire a U.S. Army surplus armored personnel carrier for two hundred dollars in May 1973.

"[1] The tank was never used in law enforcement, but Thompson mused about adding a cannon and a .50-caliber machine gun to the vehicle to guard against future riots.

[3] Thompson oversaw a series of major infrastructure upgrades during his two terms in office, including the paving and renovation of seventy-seven city streets.

[3] Ronnie Thompson also led the modernization of city hospitals, upgraded Macon's regional airports, library expansions, and campaigned for new industrial development.

[1] Throughout his time as mayor, Thompson hosted his own radio talk show and wrote a column for the Macon Herald, a weekly newspaper.

At the time, a group of white Macon residents forcibly put Bullfrog, who was black, on a bus to Detroit, Michigan, to deport the man from the city, which they derisively called a "one-way freedom ride".

[2] Thompson, then a city alderman, called Mayor Cavanagh to apologize and paid for a bus ticket to bring Bullfrog back to Macon.

[2] By 2010, Thompson was working on his master's degree in addiction studies to help with his full-time career at the River Edge Behavioral Health Center.