The older gentleman on the left in this photo is my maternal great uncle William Middlebrooks, born circa September 1894 in Woodbury, Meriwether County, GA. Uncle Bill was a real character; suave and debonair- a gambler, a fighter, a drinker. Uncle Bill didn’t take NO mess. As the story goes, Uncle Bill had to flee his home in Woodbury under the “cloak of darkness”. Family tradition says he was in an “altercation” with a white man over a pair of shoes, and was smuggled out of town with the sheriff “hot on his trail”. He was first taken to Griffin, GA, but eventually made his way to Chicago where he changed his name to Bill Sutton. He later returned to Georgia where he died in August 1977.