History -- Or Hypocrisy?

Is a proposed dump an insult to civil rights history or simply an opportunity for a poor Alabama county to make money? CBSNews.com's David Kohn reports on this strange tale of race, garbage and the modern South.

But beneath this polite, sleepy facade, a harsh dispute has erupted over a proposed landfill, with opponents hurling charges of bigotry, greed and hypocrisy. This version, however, has not followed the usual script. There, it is the all-white town up in arms over the desecration of a civil rights monument, while black politicians back the supposed desecrators.

The story began in 1998, when a well-connected white entrepreneur named Lanny Young asked the county for a permit to open a 600-acre landfill, which would take garbage from all over the state - up to 1,500 tons a day. The Lowndes County Commission approved the permit, at least in part because Young promised that the project would bring the county around a million dollars a year in revenue.

Then the plot got complicated. Some Lowndes County residents didn't want the new business. They said the landfill would desecrate the area's civil rights legacy, and deprive the county of a potential tourist attraction. Almost four decades ago, Lowndes was a key battleground in the fight for voting rights. In 1965, after black sharecroppers there were thrown off their land for trying to register, they built a tent city along State Highway 80, which runs through Lowndes County.

That same year, civil rights marchers led by Martin Luther King walked the same road through Lowndes on their way from Selma to Montgomery. The day after the march, one protester, a Detroit housewife named Viola Liuzzo, was shot to death driving through the county on Highway 80.

In 1991, the state put up a roadside monument honoring her. Five years ago, Congress designated the road a historic trail, and planning commenced for a kind of walking museum along a section in Lowndes County.

Opponents say the dump, which would sit just off Highway 80, about a mile from the Liuzzo monument, would ruin the trail.

"When this trail is put there it's going to be one of the greatest tourist attractions around, for a black man, a white man, I don't care who you are," said John Nichols, who is leading the anti-landfill fight.

A 67-year-old retired National Guardsman, Nichols is the mayor of Lowndesboro, the all-white town a mile from the proposed landfill. Lowndesboro, population 150, is dotted with antebellum houses with names like Meadowlawn, Rosewood, and The Pillars.

Nichols himself lives in a restored 171-year-old house filled with antique furniture, including a couch that he says may have belonged to Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

When he found out about the landfill, Nichols said, he knew he needed help. So he called a prominent black Lowndes preacher, Rev. Lonnie Brown: "I said 'Lonnie, the white people can't beat this. The black people can't beat this. This is a time that we need to learn to work together.'" Brown agreed; the result was something unprecedented in Lowndes County: interracial cooperation.

At Nichols' urging, a group of white and black residents began to meet regularly, planning strategy and raising money. The group's name brings to mind a '60s civil rights organization: Lowndes County Citizens United For Action.

Until the landfill dispute, Nichols said, black and white people lived in separate worlds. "Before, I spoke to 'em, but now I know 'em," said Nichols, who is known to everyone, including his wife Eloise, as Nick. "They come in my house, they come sit in my chairs, they come eat with me. It was not like that before. We go to a meeting, and it's like we were all the same color," he said, choking up.

A sturdy, loquacious man with clear blue eyes and calloused hands, Nichols does not hide his emotions. Many subjects elicit tears: His 1966 epiphany, while working as a National Guardsman protecting King's marchers, that blacks should be able to vote; the idea that town founders in the local graveyard could face the disrespect of a nearby dump; and Jesse Jackson's stirring anti-landfill speech during a rally two years ago along Highway 80.

"It was almost like a revival, a Southern Baptist revival meeting," said Nichols, who came up with the idea of inviting Jackson. "They got to singing, and then they started 'We Shall Overcome.' I'm looking around, and there is white and black people holding hands!"

"We are working together. This is the first time something like that has happened," says Kelly Lambert, a black anti-landfill leader. Of the Lowndes County whites, he says: "The ones I've been around, they seem to be very nice." A retired autoworker, Lambert lives in Burkville, the overwhelmingly black community of about 300 that is even closer to the dump than Lowndesboro.

But the moral high ground has not gone uncontested. Some say the civil rights argument is a nothing more than a cynical ploy. Find out how in Part II.

Written by David Kohn