Thomas Hency Brewer was born in Saco, Alabama, on November 16, 1894. After earning his medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, he moved to Columbus, GA. In 1920, Dr. Brewer established his office on the 1000 block of First Avenue, like Black doctors and dentists before him.

In 1929, Dr. Brewer and other Black professional men created the Social-Civic-25 Club, a service organization. A decade later, in 1939, this same group, led by Dr. Brewer, founded a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Columbus.

During his time in the NAACP, he worked to overturn the all-white primary voting system in Columbus and led a successful Black voter registration drive in the city. However, his work for racial equality led to him receiving death threats from hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1940s.

Local hostility towards Dr.Brewer came to a head following his efforts to integrate the golf course on Columbus’s South Commons and accusations that he used his political connections to deny a popular white Columbus citizen the position of city postmaster, a federal government job.

In 1956, Dr. Brewer was shot and killed by Luico Flowers, a clothing store owner under Dr. Brewer’s office. Flowers claimed to have shot Dr. Brewer in self-defense after a heated disagreement. Police and a grand jury accepted Flowers’s story.

Following his murder, many Black professionals fled the city, resulting in the Columbus civil rights movement following a far less confrontational course of action than similar movements in other Georgia cities in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Learn more about Dr. Thomas H. Brewer.