Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA — State Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta), who has been serving in the Georgia House of Representatives for 35 years and who was a colleague of Civil Rights Movement leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is planning to move to Monroe, Georgia, and will likely not run for re-election, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

 

Brooks told APN that he plans to move to Monroe, Georgia, to focus full-time on the Moore’s Ford Bridge investigation and his plans to open up a museum in Monroe related to the case.

 

The museum is to be called the Moore’s Ford Bridge Museum Educational Learning Center, he said.

 

“We’ve identified a building in Monroe.  It’s an old school administration building behind the First African Baptist Church, that’s the church we’ve been using since in 1968,” he said.

 

Brooks referred to the move as “the only way to honor Dr. King,” noting that King was working on the issue and was planning to fly to Monroe from Memphis, Tennessee, on the day King was murdered.

 

“I’m going to have to move over to Monroe, Georgia,” Brooks said.

 

“The suspects and the witnesses are getting old and dying.  They’re feeble, they’re old, they’re suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s,” Brooks said.

 

“I want to try to bring this case to some kind of closure, so we can move to healing and reconciliation,” Brooks said.

 

“I will always be committed to public service, I don’t necessarily have to be in Atlanta to do that.  I’ll only be in Monroe.  I have family in Atlanta.  I just feel like I need to be full time on the Moore’s Ford Bridge movement to bring it to closure and bring us to the next level,” Brooks said.

 

Brooks said he is planning to send a letter to U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Cmte, asking for a federal investigation.

 

“Dr. King really started the Moore’s Ford movement at the age of seventeen,” he said.

 

“35 years is enough,” Brooks said, referring to his time in the Legislature.

 

Publicist Maynard Eaton sent out an email earlier today, saying that Brooks would be resigning, but Brooks tells APN he intends to finish out his current term.

 

“I didn’t say I’m resigning.  I haven’t reached that point yet.  I don’t feel like leaving the Legislature after 35 years is a big deal.  If it comes to that [resigning], I certainly would do that,” he said.

 

“If I establish residency in Monroe, that would be my residency, and it wouldn’t be Atlanta.  I do plan to have a residence in Monroe, and I want to be as close to the Moore’s Ford bridge, to me that’s fertile ground, as possible,” he said.

 

“I might have to get a double wide trailer and put it on the river,” he said.

 

“I have been telling my colleagues for some time that the Moore’s Ford Bridge movement should be last civil rights project.  The statute of Martin Luther King is coming [to the Capitol] – that should be my last legislative project,” he said.

 

Rep. Brooks said he would “elaborate more” on his upcoming move during a series of Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials events over the next few months.

 

“As we move through these other activities, I’ll be talking more about that.”

 

In explaining his planned move, Brooks did not make reference to the ongoing criminal proceeding against him related to an indictment by the U.S. Attorney’s Office relating to his alleged conversion of charitable funds to personal use.

 

However, APN has learned, according to documents filed in the case, Brooks has been summoned to appear in court on February 11, 2015, related to a new superseding indictment that has been filed in the case.

 

Brooks has filed a new Motion to Dismiss the new indictment based on Brooks’s claims that the racial composition of the jury was disproportionately White.

 

(END/2015)