Editor's note: With the nation's first African-American president poised to preside over the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this fall, the Observer will look back each Sunday this month (Black History Month) at trailblazing black political figures of the region's past.

The year was 1964, and as racial tensions rattled many Southern cities, a human relations committee in Gastonia quietly worked to open public facilities to blacks.

The first would be a Holiday Inn restaurant.

Committee members had approached management about a peaceful integration. They needed the right person to do it and chose committee member T. Jeffers, a black high school principal and city council member.

So one night, Jeffers arrived alone and sat down to order dinner. Former state Sen. Marshall Rauch, who chaired the 20-man committee, recalls he and Jim Atkins, then Gastonia Gazette publisher and a committee member, ate dinner at a nearby table.

"We wanted to be there in case things went wrong," Rauch said. "But no one bothered T. We had our first victory, largely because of T.'s quiet influence."

Twelve years later in 1976, Thebaud Jeffers (he preferred to be called T.) became Gastonia's first black mayor - seven years ahead of Charlotte electing architect Harvey Gantt its first black mayor.

Jeffers was first appointed when Mayor Roland Bradley died. But then he was elected in 1977 and re-elected in 1979, 1981 and in a landslide in 1983.

Months later, Jeffers died of complications from a brain tumor at 75.

"He offered his leadership at a time when Gastonia really needed him," said N.A. Smith, a retired pharmacist and African-American who also was on the committee. "He helped keep a control on things."

Nonconfrontational style

When he died, Jeffers' influence and low-key persuasion had long been felt. He'd been principal of all-black Highland High for 28 years, since 1940, and had supervised Gaston County secondary schools and been on the faculty at UNC Charlotte.

After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, Jeffers helped restrain racial tensions in Gastonia as other U.S. cities were looted and burned.

On Gastonia City Council and as mayor, he worked to keep affordable housing and anti-poverty programs a city priority.

About the time restaurants were integrated, the human relations committee went after hotels and motels. Owners looked to Jeffers to vouch for the "respectability" of black patrons.

Once, the president of historically black Spelman College in Atlanta and his wife stopped at a Gastonia hotel for the night. The clerk told the couple they could stay, but first he had to check with T. Jeffers.

Jeffers also helped lead schools through integration.

In September 1963, two sisters integrated all-white Ashley High. In 1966, the school board voted to desegregate all city schools.

Jeffers worked behind the scenes for a smooth transition. He avoided confrontation.

In the growing black militancy of the 1960s, that style brought criticism from some blacks eager to accelerate change. Some said Jeffers was being used by white leaders.

Smith wasn't one of them.

"It was his style, and the relationships he had with blacks and whites that made T. Jeffers so effective," he said. "Being mayor broadened his relationships. He was in the proper place at the proper time."

Jeffers deflected his critics.

"There are times when you realize that you may be a symbol," he once told the Observer. "When you're a symbol, it seems to me that you've got responsibilities than when you're less a symbol."

Encouraged and inspired

It may seem unlikely, but Gastonia in the 1960s was a place and time that easily adapted to Jeffers' leadership.

Jeffers grew up in segregated Roxboro in Person County and after college at Johnson C. Smith University, he went to the University of Southern California to get a master's degree.

On the way, his car broke down in a Texas town that had no motels for blacks. He had to sleep in the car and eat in the kitchen of a white-owned café.

After graduate school and post-graduate work at Cornell University, Jeffers returned to North Carolina and moved to Gastonia in 1940.

He found a city that had long encouraged black participation. Blacks had voted in city elections since the 1930s. A black magistrate was elected in the 1930s.

In 1947, Gastonia hired three black police officers. Six years later, Nathaniel Barber became the first black city council member - a dozen years before Fred Alexander was elected Charlotte's first black city council member.

"It shows you can't take Southern stereotypes at their face," said Tom Hanchett, historian for the Museum of the New South.

"Gastonia being a major textile center isn't the first place you'd expect barriers being turned over. The story I've heard is that the mill owners had a great deal of sway and looked at the civil rights movement and said: 'This change is going to come. We're going to get out ahead of it.' "

Jeffers was a natural leader, encouraging younger blacks to get involved - including Gantt.

"T. Jeffers inspired by doing, instead of calling attention to himself," Gantt said. "We all admired him as someone who was able to draw people together and get things done."