In Profile: Uncle Lawrence

Lawrence Depriest Deramus, my great-grandparents' seventh child and the oldest boy, was born in 1929 in Autauga County, Alabama. I have written a lot about my uncle. He was a beautiful man and I enjoyed his spirit and his grace immensely. Uncle Lawrence was always a very insightful, intuitive, and inquisitive man. He often paid attention to and figured things out that the rest of his siblings didn't. He was a very intellectual man and he enjoyed decades long intellectual engagement with his brother, Archie, and his second cousin, Wade. Uncle Lawrence, like Aunt Bertie, skipped a few grades in grade school, and so was eventually on equal footing with Aunt Betty. After high school, he was enlisted into the army and fought in the Korean War, which was a profound experience for him, one which he reflected on for the rest of his life. After serving in the military, he returned home and recieved his Bachelor's degree from Alabama State University, using the GI Bill.

Finishing college, Uncle Lawrence began teaching in Covington, Alabama at a job that our Cousin Madeira got for him(she and Aunt Earnestine were bosom allies--first cousins and also going to school together, as well as marrying each other's respective boyfriends. They also both served as principals in Autauga County). Uncle Lawrence went from there to teaching in Coffee County, where he would reside, in Enterprise, for the rest of his life.

While teaching in Coffee County, Uncle Lawrence was responsible for starting a credit union for teachers there--which has grown into a major enterprise, and establishing the Head Start Program there in the region.He also founded the NAACP chapter there in the area. My Uncle wrote his autobiigraphy, in which he tells about when he was getting the Head Start program up off of the ground--which the superintendent didn't like. One day, he said the superintendent came into his classroom, hands on hips, and asked him--trying to intimidate him--"Who do you work for?" My Uncle responded, "Who do you think I work for?" He said the man had interrupted his class and was trying to big talk him. He said he was sitting there at his desk--and he usually kept a bow knife in it--and he went for the drawer as if he were opening it. He said he got up and met the man. He said he told him "Don't you ever come in my classroom again and talk to me like that in front of my children." He said he scared the man so bad he took off from that room. He never had any trouble with him again.

My uncle stopped teaching a few years later and began working for the federal government, overseeing a program called OCAP--which was responsible for overseeing integration and economic development in the Blackbelt region in Alabama. For this work, he recieved training at Atlanta University. He said that he worked with an integrated staff, having a white secretary as well as whites working along side him. He told me that the head of the Ku Klux Klan there in the area called him up one night and asked him "Don't you have a white secretary?" He responded "Yes I do." "Dont you travel along I-65 at night a lot of times?" "Yes I do." He said the man was trying to intimidate him. The man asked him "aren't you scared driving out there at night, something might happen to you?" My Uncle said he told him, "No, Im not scared, because if you and your boys want to do something then you just come on and you better bring Jesus with you because if I have to go I intend to take some of you with me." He told me that he always traveled with a gun at hand. My Uncle was a Goodson to the core. A compassionate, intellectually astute, passionate man, my Uncle was beautiful in many ways.

Uncle Lawrence, as I said, was a Goodson to the core. He could argue and fuss til the sun went down the next day. He was rough around the edges, sometimes mean(never to me, but he could be mean), and was difficult to get along with. As my cousin said at his funeral "Many of you knew him, most of you have been told off by him a time or to." He believed in right, he cared about his community, and he was a neighbor, a friend, and a brother to all. I loved him dearly.

When he died, the Governor sent a letter of condolence to the family and there were a multitude of honors that came his way. May his soul rest in peace.