In celebration of Black History Month, we are examining the contributions of African-Americans in Troup County. 

From 1949 to 1968, Callaway Mills published the Callaway Beacon, a regular newsmagazine for its employees. Within the magazine’s pages are profiles and highlights of many of the mill’s employees as well as announcements of marking their private lives; making these publications a veritable garden of genealogical information as well as providing a nuanced glimpse into the daily lives of working-class LaGrange citizens in the mid-20th century. 

While so many of the people featured in Black History Month profiles are accomplished leaders and innovators, the workaday people who worked hard and provided for their families deserve no less recognition for their accomplishments. These are some of their stories of the African-American employees with a profile in the Callaway Beacon is Franklin Heard, who was featured in the edition on June 28, 1954. 

At that time, Heard was employed as a card stripper in card room of the Valway Plant and he and his family lived at 14 Jones Street with a yard filled with roses. These 25 to 30 rose bushes were planted by Franklin and his wife, Lela Mae. “Most of them came from cuttings which friends gave us, and the others we bought,” he is quoted as saying. “We planted the cuttings immediately, and not long ago I built a fence for them to run on. Now, they form a pretty and colorful frame for the yard.”

In addition to maintaining his rose bushes, Heard was also an ordained minister and was serving as the Assistant Pastor at Sardis Baptist Church. He had received the call to become a minister while on the job one day and preached his first sermon eight years earlier, in 1946, at Valley Grove Baptist Church. 

The article concludes with Heard saying, “I’ve always wanted a happy home, and since I’ve been trying to live the type of life I preach, I’ve certainly had one.”

Two images were published with the article: the first shows Mr. Heard with his roses, and the second image shows him with his wife and children standing in front of their home. The family, left to right, are Willie James, 9; Annie Clyde, 10; Lela Mae, Franklin’s wife; Melvin Donald, 2; Franklin; Grady Lee, 6; Sanford Earnest, 7; and Frankie Mae, 12.