It was known as Cootsie’s Variety Store, and for years it was a staple in the neighborhood in tiny Folkston, Ga. Cootsie was more formally known as Johanna Bailey, and she handled all facets of the business, from purchases to balancing the books. This was the only real exposure that one of her grandsons, Roland Bailey — known informally as Champ Bailey — remembered getting as a kid to how a business was run.



Champ does remember his father sometimes pointing out other businesses in Folkston, the restaurants and places that segregated against people like his father when he was younger. That didn’t make the family eager to be part of the city’s chamber of commerce, so the Bailey family business veered away from the neighborhood store. It became football.



Three decades later, a visitor enters an ornate office building in downtown Atlanta, decorated in marble, goes up to the 23rd floor, and is ushered into a conference room that has a view of...