Senator Bacon left Macon a park for white people only; when the courts opened it to all, it went back to his heirs and became a strip mall

Augustus O. Bacon, a Confederate veteran and Georgia senator, signed his will in 1911. He gave 75 acres to the City of Macon as trustee for a park for "the white women and children of the city of Macon". He had given 100 acres to the Masonic Orphanage. He died in 1914, and Baconsfield Park opened in 1920. On 4 May 1963 members of the park's board sued to remove the city as trustee so that the park could be segregated again. On 20 May the city answered that it could not legally enforce segregation, and in 1964 it resigned as trustee. Black residents opposed the board, with E. S. Evans as the named party. In 1966, in Evans v. Newton, the US Supreme Court held that the park could not be run on a racial basis. The Supreme Court of Georgia then held that the trust's only purpose had become impossible, that the trust failed, and that the land went back to Bacon's heirs. It refused to apply cy-près to remove the racial restriction. On 26 January 1970, in Evans v. Abney, the US Supreme Court affirmed by 5 votes to 2, with Justices Douglas and Brennan dissenting. The heirs' trustees set an asking price of $2 million. A preservation group formed in 1971, and the city council voted 12 to 2 in March 1972 to abandon the effort to buy it. A Mercer University account says the park land is now a strip mall and an abandoned car lot.