The Reverend Cadmus Allen Samples, black pastor of New Hope Church in the northwest section of Atlanta, Georgia, became involved in many civil rights organizations in Atlanta during the mid-1960s. He served as Public Program Coordinator and a member of the Acting Advisory Council of the Northwest Community of Atlanta; as Executive Secretary of the Scott Crossing Civic League; and as an advisor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Atlanta Project, the local PTA, and several city commissions. He was involved in the Atlanta Grass Roots Crusade, an informal group of people from low-income housing seeking more participation of the poor in programs affecting them. On several projects he worked closely with Ortelus Shelmon, an Atlantan active in civil rights since the early 1920s.
Reverend Samples believed in the dignity and worth of the individual and strove to instill this feeling in the poor of Atlanta both through one-minute radio sermons and through his involvement in programs affecting them. He believed that the poor should have a voice in structuring the policies they had to live with, and consequently he protested against the all-white power structure of Economic Opportunity Atlanta and other poverty programs. In early 1967 he became an outspoken critic of the war in Viet Nam because he felt the money being spent there could be better used to feed the poor in America and because he felt it was a white man's war being fought by blacks.
In the summer of 1966 Samples felt called to run for the seat of the 134th Georgia House District. The Democratic Party refused to qualify him, stating that he had a criminal record. Samples protested against these false charges and petitioned to run, but the petition was disallowed for petty reasons. As a result Samples and other Democrats started a grass roots party with a people's platform.
