Black History Month stickers are plastered all over a room on the floor of The Palms at Lake Spivey, a senior living community in Jonesboro. For many, it would just signal a celebration of the month-long holiday, but beyond the door is 78-year-old Leona Ivey, a resident at The Palms who is being honored for her community service and local fights for injustice during the Civil Rights Movement.
From volunteering at The Palms to chairing the finance department at her church and organizing Thanksgiving baskets for families in need, Ivey said she loves giving back but doesn’t crave the recognition of her good deeds.
“It feels good to be honored, but I’m not one that likes to be honored; I do it from my heart. I do a lot of stuff, but it’s because of the leadership of my father, which is God. He just guides me to do things,” Ivey said. “I don’t like to be around a lot of people, but I love people. Ever since I was a little girl, I used to give away everything, but that’s the way I am.”
Ivey grew up in Scottsdale, Georgia, as the eldest of nine children and the stepdaughter of a preacher. She shared that they lived a happy life and always thought they were rich because she believed they had everything they needed. However, growing up in a Black community led her to question why they were treated differently. She graduated from Hamilton High School in 1964, a former school serving Black students that closed after desegregation just five years later. During that time, her church mentor took a group down to Macon to participate in a civil rights march that became the first of many for Ivey.
“I always said I marched with Dr. King because that’s what I always wanted to do. But we never knew who was on the front line because we were children and were in the back. I always say he was there because I always felt like he was at every march.
“But I know some of the marches are not even documented. I participated in quite a few that are not documented.”
Ivey was taught nonviolence by her church mentor and worked out of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch in Decatur while attending college. In 1966, the NAACP sent Ivey to Sears to apply for a job after she hinted that she would quit school to help her family with finances. When she inquired about a clerical position they’d been advertising, management told her there were no clerical positions open and that she could work in the cafeteria as a cashier, a reality for many Black workers who were relegated to kitchen, janitorial, and warehouse positions. The NAACP called them and accused them of discriminatory hiring, and she was offered a position as a warehouse supervisor.
“At Sears. It was Black and white on the water fountains and on the bathrooms. We had to sit in the back of the cafeteria… It helped me to understand a lot.”
Ivey was among a group of Black workers who organized a march to protest Sears’ discriminatory hiring practices. Along with civil rights leader and Atlanta icon Hosea Williams, they walked out of the popular department store. After the walk-out, Ivey said she and other Black workers in different departments were promoted.
“I think the marches, even the undocumented marches, helped us a lot. You can [enact change] at any age… You treat people not the way they treat you, but the way you want to be treated.”