Garlington Jerome (G. J., Dee) Sutton, was the first black elected official from Bexar County. G. J. Sutton was the eighth of fifteen children. Sutton was educated in San Antonio public schools and attended Wiley College in Marshall. He earned a bachelor of science degree at Wilberforce University, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1932 and later a degree in mortuary science at Cincinnati College. After his return to San Antonio in 1938, G. J. and his brother Samuel took over the family's business, Sutton and Sutton Funeral Home, the oldest black-owned mortuary in San Antonio. Sutton's first elected position came in 1948, when he became a member of the board of trustees of the San Antonio Union Junior College District. As trustee he tried to increase the resources devoted to St. Philip's College, a campus serving mostly blacks and Hispanics. A three-story learning center on the St. Philip's campus was named in his honor in June 1980.

After the legislative redistricting of Texas in 1972, Sutton became the first representative of District 57-E and the first black elected representative from San Antonio. He was chosen chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and was a staunch supporter of the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio and of state grants for college students. When the Texas legislature wrote a new state constitution in 1974, Sutton's criticisms contributed to its rejection by the voters. He proposed that the state buy an office building in his district to save leasing money, to serve neglected citizens better, and to enhance the city's efforts to revitalize the St. Paul Square neighborhood. Appropriations after his death made possible dedication of the renovated G. J. Sutton State Office Complex in his honor on October 27, 1982. Sutton was a trustee and lifelong member of the Second Baptist Church of San Antonio. He was in the Texas delegation to the 1960 Democratic national convention and had just been elected a delegate to the 1976 convention at the time of his death. He was on the boards of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and of the Independent Funeral Directors' Association of Texas. Sutton taught as a visiting lecturer at Baylor University and belonged to many organizations, among them the National Funeral Directors' Association, the Van Courtlandt Club, the Plaza Club, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity; he was a thirty-second-degree Mason. He was chosen Father of the Year by the Twentieth Century Club in 1972 and commended for outstanding community service by the Mission City Elks Lodge and by St. Philip's College. The Independent Funeral Directors' Association chose him as 1973 Man of the Year, and in 1974 Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity commended him for outstanding achievement in government. The San Antonio Express-News designated him politician of the year in 1975. Sutton first married Jeffery Plummer of San Marcos; they had one daughter. In 1958 Sutton married Lou Nelle Callahan of San Angelo, who succeeded him as representative of District 57-E in the Texas House of Representatives, thus becoming the first woman to represent Bexar County in the legislature. Sutton died of a heart attack in San Antonio on his sixty-seventh birthday, June 22, 1976. The Texas Legislative Black Caucus presents a G. J. Sutton award for leadership each legislative session.

In 1938, Mr. Sutton joined his brother to operate Sutton and Sutton Mortuary. He also founded Gates of Heaven Memorial Gardens Cemetery in San Antonio. He is buried alongside his wife at that cemetery in the family plot.