by Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons
Carol Thomas was born in Zanesville, Ohio to Arthur Wamhoner and Margaret (Pelot) Wamhoener. After six weeks, Carol’s parents moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she grew up. Carol grew up, as she described it, in a “vibrant, gritty, multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-religious” city. She attended Pershing High School, graduating in 1951. Carol attended college at Wayne State University in Detroit. Carol recalled in the numerous interviews she did for UF’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Project, “the event that provoked the direction of her life was the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.” While only 10 years old at the time, she was deeply affected by the tumult and the killing and expressions of hatred toward many African Americans after the riot.
Carol met Billy Thomas at Wayne State University, where they fell in love and were married in 1952. Carol and Billy moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where Billy went to do his graduate work at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Carol also enrolled in Vanderbilt University to continue her undergraduate studies.
The 1954 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools had a profound impact on Carol’s thinking about race relations in the U.S. Billy and she went for films at Fisk University, meeting some of the students who would become leaders in the burgeoning civil rights movement.
Carol and Billy had three children, Martel, born in Chicago where they lived briefly; Michael, born in Nashville while Billy did his postdoctoral work; and David, after they moved to Gainesville in 1960 when Billy took a position at the University of Florida in the Physics Department.
As the civil rights movement began in Gainesville, Carol became more and more involved. She joined the League of Women Voters but did not find them action oriented enough. In 1962, she joined the Gainesville Women For Equal Rights (b.1961), an action group that was more to her liking. She went on her first civil rights march that same year.
Carol became involved with and an avid supporter of the newly formed University of Florida student group, Students for Equal Rights. She also became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Carol engaged in a massive voter registration effort to get Black people registered. She also became active in efforts to improve the conditions in the Porter’s community where she made many long-term friends.
Carol and Billy’s home became the center for many civil rights meetings where demonstrations were planned. She joined the picket line at the Waffle House demonstrations, one of the longest running and most contentious desegregation actions in downtown Gainesville.
Carol become a target of Gainesville’s white establishment, where she was labeled as a “Race Traitor” and later as “the most dangerous woman in Gainesville.” There were nightly KKK demonstrations outside her home that the police department did little to break up. With much Black community support, Carol was appointed to Gainesville’s Bi-Racial Committee, made up of eight Black and eight white members, but with two white co-Chairs. Carol led the effort to change this leadership structure and insisted on there being a Black and a white co-chair, which occurred.
The Gainesville establishment began plotting with the DA’s office and the police department to frame Carol on specious criminal charges, such as “Aiding and abetting the delinquency of a minor,” “assisting fugitives,” “kidnapping a minor,” and “assaulting a police officer during an arrest.” Carol served eight months in county jail, while the community supported Billy in carrying for their three small children.
When Carol learned of the plot to determine that she was an unfit mother and remove her children from her care, she reluctantly decided to leave Gainesville, taking her three minor children with her to Louisville, Kentucky. Carol was offered and took a job with the Southern Conference Education Fund. She also worked for the Louisville American Civil Liberties Union. Carol was instrumental in the organizing of the Louisville Tenants Union.
Carol did some international travel to Cuba and Nicaragua, seeing firsthand how countries operate as they attempt to implement a Socialist agenda for the good of all their citizens.
Carol returned to Gainesville in 2000, where she continued her work as “one of the most dangerous women in Gainesville.”
Carol W. Thomas, courageous as a lion with a loving heart of gold, ¡presenté!
Carol Thomas’s grave side services will be on Friday, May 23 at 10am at the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, County Rd 234, Gainesville. For information call 352-336-5910 or go to prairiecreekconservationcemetery.org.