Harold Titus's Blog - Posts Tagged "charles-sherrod"
Civil Rights -- Albany Movement -- SNCC Comes to Town
By 1961 SNCC, still practically brand new, was trying to craft its identity and find its footing following the sit-in movement. Some wanted to keep with the tradition of the sit-ins and focus the organization’s energies on nonviolent direct action. Others wanted to focus on voter registration, especially in the Black Belt, where disenfranchised Blacks made up the majority of the population. Despite intense internal debates, there was a broad consensus among activists that, in the words of James Forman, it was “important then to just do, to act, as a means of overcoming the lethargy and hopelessness of so many Black people.” Rather than establish rigid definitions of goals and tactics, “it seemed best then to experiment and learn and experiment some more.”
W.E.B. DuBois described Southwest Georgia as “a great fertile land, luxuriant with forests of pine, oak, ash, hickory, and poplar, hot with the sun and damp with the rich black swampland; and here the Cotton Kingdom was laid.” It was as violent and resistant to civil rights as Mississippi. With names like “Terrible Terrell,” “Unbearable Baker,” and “Unworthy Worth,” the counties of Southwest Georgia were notorious strongholds of white supremacy and the oppression of Black people. Carolyn Daniels, a beautician who housed SNCC workers, remembers growing up in Terrell County and hearing stories about people she knew getting beaten and lynched.
In the middle of the region sat Albany, a city of 60,000 and roughly 40% Black. Albany tried to cultivate an image distinct from the racial violence that characterized the counties that surrounded it. The city was still racially segregated, however, and Black residents were often subjected to humiliation at the hands of whites (October 1-2).
Doctor William Anderson, president of the Albany Movement, interviewed by Eyes on the Prize, characterized Albany as a semi-rural community with a lot of the industry at least in part dependent upon farming. There was very little industry. It was a rather close-knit town in that people knew each other. It was a totally segregated town. Blacks held no positions in any of the stores downtown as salespersons, clerks or what have you. Of course, there were no black policemen, blacks held no political office. As a matter of fact they weren't even called blacks. They were called negroes by the ones who were more liberal and benevolent, and they were called more unsavory things by others. You couldn't say that it was a community where you could experience racial harmony. The interplay or interaction was non-existent. And most of the people who had lived in Albany all of their lives had sort of come to accept things as they were. Or at least there was no outward expression of opposition to things as they were. So Albany was not unlike thousands of other towns of that size or smaller, dotted throughout the south, where you had a total segregation of the—of the races. You had a community that was, that primarily was dependent upon the farm industry to some extent or another. You had a community that blacks who were employed were employed in the service industries with very few professionals. The only professionals you could find would be school teachers, ministers and very few doctors. At the time that the Albany Movement started there was fortunately a black lawyer. This was a rarity of course in a town of that size in Georgia (Interview 1).
Albany was just as violent as other, better known areas, such as southern Mississippi, which Ralph Abernathy would characterize as the worst area for race relations in America. Chief of Police Laurie Pritchett admitted that rampant Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party activity existed in the area surrounding Albany. … Comparing it to his own hometown of Thomasville, Georgia, Andrew Young attested that “Albany was one of the reasons black folk in Thomasville hadn’t complained too much- they had only to Albany to consider their own status bearable.” Contrary to popular depiction, it is clear that Albany did not represent an anomaly in regards to the violence of the Deep South. If anything, it represented a stellar example of violent repression, as Birmingham and Selma would later become.
Cordell Reagon and Charles Sherrod descended into this environment in October of 1961. Neither man was from Georgia, hailing from Nashville, Tennessee and Petersburg, Virginia, respectively. Both were Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretaries, dispatched to begin voter registration and civil rights work in the area (Nelligan 3-4).
In June 1961, Sherrod became SNCC’s first full-time field secretary. When the sit-in began, Sherrod was a student of religion at Virginia Union University, thirty miles away from his home in Petersburg. He helped staged local sit-ins at department stores in Richmond. He participated in SNCC’s founding conference, and after being arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina with fellow student activists Diane Nash, Ruby Doris Smith, and Charles Jones, they pioneered SNCC’s Jail-No-Bail strategy, serving out the full 30-day sentence (Charles 1).
Reagon was a 16-year-old high school student in Nashville, Tennessee when he impulsively joined a SNCC march in his city, simply because it “looked exciting.” His hasty decision grew into a life-time commitment to SNCC’s organizing efforts. … Reagon was stewarded into SNCC’s field organizing by James Forman. His first assignment was working with Bob Moses on voter registration efforts in McComb, Mississippi. Soon after, he joined Charles Sherrod’s organizing in Albany, Georgia. SNCC workers referred to Reagon as “the baby of the Movement” when he became SNCC’s youngest staff member in 1961 (Cordell 1).
Sherrod and Reagon began their work in surrounding counties, attempting to register the large number of African-Americans living there, as well as bolster community support. However, the two found the nearby areas of “Terrible” Terrell and “Bad” Baker counties too hostile for voter registration work, resulting in a move back to Albany in late October. Hoping to capitalize on the resentment of segregation and “a lot of brutality from police going on,” the two began tapping into the community. Sherrod explained their strategy: “We would go into a town and find out where the children hung out, the high school kids, the college kids. And find out what was happening…what was the main issue in the various communities. …After observing that, [we would] move the young people toward that, and deal with it.” The presence of Albany State College encouraged the SNCC activists who believed that the student population would help form a solid base for their activities.
Luckily for SNCC, Sherrod and Reagon found a number of students receptive to their message at the College. Many of these students had been previously involved in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council. The SNCC secretaries began holding meetings to teach nonviolent principles to young students and to encourage voter registration. From the beginning, the two made clear their desire to build a movement with its “strength…in the people.” As in many communities across the South, voter registration proved difficult. The registrar had a habit of taking lunch breaks for days at a time, and upon returning, enjoyed quizzing African-American applicants on complex sections of the Constitution. At times, his questions strayed from the material. Rev. Horace C. Boyd remembers being asked to name how many bubbles were on a bar of soap. Through conscious effort, the white establishment sought to keep African-Americans disenfranchised and politically impotent. Despite this, civil rights activities found initial support among some local students.
In contrast to their reception among the young, the arrival of the SNCC activist elicited a far chillier response from the black adult community. Sherrod attributed the less than welcoming environment to rampant fear. People “didn’t want to be connected to us in any way.” Revealing the attitude many African-American adults held, Dr. William G. Anderson, a local osteopath, stated the SNCC secretaries “infiltrated the community” (Nelligan 4-6).
Years later in an interview Anderson was measured in his characterization of Sherrod.
Charlie looked like the typical college kid, who had been caught up with the excitement of the time. He was very dedicated, very well motivated and nothing would suit him better than to make a reputation for himself and his organization and Albany looked like the perfect place to do that.
I believe collectively that was our reaction. He was received very well. He was a very dynamic individual—presented himself very well, spoke fluently, and I think the community at large kind of perceived him as a person who was assuming a position in life that would somehow enough somehow sooner or later make an indelible imprint not only on Albany, but on the nation, He seemed to be destined for that (Interview 2).
Sherrod and Reagon did little to assuage the worry of the African-American community, openly declaring their intention to turn the town on its head. The local chapter of the NAACP “regarded the coming of SNCC with horror,” viewing Sherrod’s and Reagon’s actions as a challenge to their more conservative, legal-based methods of civil rights protest and local control. NAACP leader Thomas Chatmon’s apparently unfounded assertion that Sherrod and Reagon were communists led other members of the community to express their discomfort with having the two SNCC workers in Albany. Wild claims of communist sympathies and suicidal demonstration tactics suggest that many adult members of the [black] community felt uncomfortable with SNCC’s presence in Albany. Far from garnering a broad base of community support, the SNCC secretaries were alienating key members of the black community due to their openly disruptive tactics (Nelligan 6).
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee volunteer's vision of racial inclusion seemed so radical that many blacks in town literally were afraid to come close to him. "Albany was the kind of town where everybody knew their place," Sherrod said. "Black people were afraid to talk to me. Some were even so fearful that if I was walking on one side of the street, they would go on the other side" (Fletcher 1).
Despite opposition from adults, student support for Sherrod and Reagon grew slowly. As this support spread, the SNCC secretaries began planning the first direct challenge to segregation in Albany. Both men agreed to test the Interstate Commerce Commission’s ruling banning segregation in interstate bus terminals, which was to go into effect November 1, 1961. Along with the approval of the Youth Council, the test plan called for Sherrod and Reagon to test the bus terminals’ facilities. Albany students would integrate the waiting rooms when interstate travelers disembarked (Nellligan 7).
Works cited:
“Charles Sherrod.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/people/charle...
“Cordell Reagon.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/people/cordel...
Fletcher, Michael A. “Vetrerans of the Movement Find Time Outstripping Its Gains.” The Washington Post. July 17, 1996. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
Morgan, Thad. “How Freedom Rider Diane Nash Risked Her Life to Desegregate the South.” History. March 8, 2018. Web. https://www.history.com/news/diane-na....
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“October 1961: SNCC Arrives in Albany.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/sncc-a...
W.E.B. DuBois described Southwest Georgia as “a great fertile land, luxuriant with forests of pine, oak, ash, hickory, and poplar, hot with the sun and damp with the rich black swampland; and here the Cotton Kingdom was laid.” It was as violent and resistant to civil rights as Mississippi. With names like “Terrible Terrell,” “Unbearable Baker,” and “Unworthy Worth,” the counties of Southwest Georgia were notorious strongholds of white supremacy and the oppression of Black people. Carolyn Daniels, a beautician who housed SNCC workers, remembers growing up in Terrell County and hearing stories about people she knew getting beaten and lynched.
In the middle of the region sat Albany, a city of 60,000 and roughly 40% Black. Albany tried to cultivate an image distinct from the racial violence that characterized the counties that surrounded it. The city was still racially segregated, however, and Black residents were often subjected to humiliation at the hands of whites (October 1-2).
Doctor William Anderson, president of the Albany Movement, interviewed by Eyes on the Prize, characterized Albany as a semi-rural community with a lot of the industry at least in part dependent upon farming. There was very little industry. It was a rather close-knit town in that people knew each other. It was a totally segregated town. Blacks held no positions in any of the stores downtown as salespersons, clerks or what have you. Of course, there were no black policemen, blacks held no political office. As a matter of fact they weren't even called blacks. They were called negroes by the ones who were more liberal and benevolent, and they were called more unsavory things by others. You couldn't say that it was a community where you could experience racial harmony. The interplay or interaction was non-existent. And most of the people who had lived in Albany all of their lives had sort of come to accept things as they were. Or at least there was no outward expression of opposition to things as they were. So Albany was not unlike thousands of other towns of that size or smaller, dotted throughout the south, where you had a total segregation of the—of the races. You had a community that was, that primarily was dependent upon the farm industry to some extent or another. You had a community that blacks who were employed were employed in the service industries with very few professionals. The only professionals you could find would be school teachers, ministers and very few doctors. At the time that the Albany Movement started there was fortunately a black lawyer. This was a rarity of course in a town of that size in Georgia (Interview 1).
Albany was just as violent as other, better known areas, such as southern Mississippi, which Ralph Abernathy would characterize as the worst area for race relations in America. Chief of Police Laurie Pritchett admitted that rampant Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party activity existed in the area surrounding Albany. … Comparing it to his own hometown of Thomasville, Georgia, Andrew Young attested that “Albany was one of the reasons black folk in Thomasville hadn’t complained too much- they had only to Albany to consider their own status bearable.” Contrary to popular depiction, it is clear that Albany did not represent an anomaly in regards to the violence of the Deep South. If anything, it represented a stellar example of violent repression, as Birmingham and Selma would later become.
Cordell Reagon and Charles Sherrod descended into this environment in October of 1961. Neither man was from Georgia, hailing from Nashville, Tennessee and Petersburg, Virginia, respectively. Both were Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretaries, dispatched to begin voter registration and civil rights work in the area (Nelligan 3-4).
In June 1961, Sherrod became SNCC’s first full-time field secretary. When the sit-in began, Sherrod was a student of religion at Virginia Union University, thirty miles away from his home in Petersburg. He helped staged local sit-ins at department stores in Richmond. He participated in SNCC’s founding conference, and after being arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina with fellow student activists Diane Nash, Ruby Doris Smith, and Charles Jones, they pioneered SNCC’s Jail-No-Bail strategy, serving out the full 30-day sentence (Charles 1).
Reagon was a 16-year-old high school student in Nashville, Tennessee when he impulsively joined a SNCC march in his city, simply because it “looked exciting.” His hasty decision grew into a life-time commitment to SNCC’s organizing efforts. … Reagon was stewarded into SNCC’s field organizing by James Forman. His first assignment was working with Bob Moses on voter registration efforts in McComb, Mississippi. Soon after, he joined Charles Sherrod’s organizing in Albany, Georgia. SNCC workers referred to Reagon as “the baby of the Movement” when he became SNCC’s youngest staff member in 1961 (Cordell 1).
Sherrod and Reagon began their work in surrounding counties, attempting to register the large number of African-Americans living there, as well as bolster community support. However, the two found the nearby areas of “Terrible” Terrell and “Bad” Baker counties too hostile for voter registration work, resulting in a move back to Albany in late October. Hoping to capitalize on the resentment of segregation and “a lot of brutality from police going on,” the two began tapping into the community. Sherrod explained their strategy: “We would go into a town and find out where the children hung out, the high school kids, the college kids. And find out what was happening…what was the main issue in the various communities. …After observing that, [we would] move the young people toward that, and deal with it.” The presence of Albany State College encouraged the SNCC activists who believed that the student population would help form a solid base for their activities.
Luckily for SNCC, Sherrod and Reagon found a number of students receptive to their message at the College. Many of these students had been previously involved in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council. The SNCC secretaries began holding meetings to teach nonviolent principles to young students and to encourage voter registration. From the beginning, the two made clear their desire to build a movement with its “strength…in the people.” As in many communities across the South, voter registration proved difficult. The registrar had a habit of taking lunch breaks for days at a time, and upon returning, enjoyed quizzing African-American applicants on complex sections of the Constitution. At times, his questions strayed from the material. Rev. Horace C. Boyd remembers being asked to name how many bubbles were on a bar of soap. Through conscious effort, the white establishment sought to keep African-Americans disenfranchised and politically impotent. Despite this, civil rights activities found initial support among some local students.
In contrast to their reception among the young, the arrival of the SNCC activist elicited a far chillier response from the black adult community. Sherrod attributed the less than welcoming environment to rampant fear. People “didn’t want to be connected to us in any way.” Revealing the attitude many African-American adults held, Dr. William G. Anderson, a local osteopath, stated the SNCC secretaries “infiltrated the community” (Nelligan 4-6).
Years later in an interview Anderson was measured in his characterization of Sherrod.
Charlie looked like the typical college kid, who had been caught up with the excitement of the time. He was very dedicated, very well motivated and nothing would suit him better than to make a reputation for himself and his organization and Albany looked like the perfect place to do that.
I believe collectively that was our reaction. He was received very well. He was a very dynamic individual—presented himself very well, spoke fluently, and I think the community at large kind of perceived him as a person who was assuming a position in life that would somehow enough somehow sooner or later make an indelible imprint not only on Albany, but on the nation, He seemed to be destined for that (Interview 2).
Sherrod and Reagon did little to assuage the worry of the African-American community, openly declaring their intention to turn the town on its head. The local chapter of the NAACP “regarded the coming of SNCC with horror,” viewing Sherrod’s and Reagon’s actions as a challenge to their more conservative, legal-based methods of civil rights protest and local control. NAACP leader Thomas Chatmon’s apparently unfounded assertion that Sherrod and Reagon were communists led other members of the community to express their discomfort with having the two SNCC workers in Albany. Wild claims of communist sympathies and suicidal demonstration tactics suggest that many adult members of the [black] community felt uncomfortable with SNCC’s presence in Albany. Far from garnering a broad base of community support, the SNCC secretaries were alienating key members of the black community due to their openly disruptive tactics (Nelligan 6).
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee volunteer's vision of racial inclusion seemed so radical that many blacks in town literally were afraid to come close to him. "Albany was the kind of town where everybody knew their place," Sherrod said. "Black people were afraid to talk to me. Some were even so fearful that if I was walking on one side of the street, they would go on the other side" (Fletcher 1).
Despite opposition from adults, student support for Sherrod and Reagon grew slowly. As this support spread, the SNCC secretaries began planning the first direct challenge to segregation in Albany. Both men agreed to test the Interstate Commerce Commission’s ruling banning segregation in interstate bus terminals, which was to go into effect November 1, 1961. Along with the approval of the Youth Council, the test plan called for Sherrod and Reagon to test the bus terminals’ facilities. Albany students would integrate the waiting rooms when interstate travelers disembarked (Nellligan 7).
Works cited:
“Charles Sherrod.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/people/charle...
“Cordell Reagon.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/people/cordel...
Fletcher, Michael A. “Vetrerans of the Movement Find Time Outstripping Its Gains.” The Washington Post. July 17, 1996. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
Morgan, Thad. “How Freedom Rider Diane Nash Risked Her Life to Desegregate the South.” History. March 8, 2018. Web. https://www.history.com/news/diane-na....
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“October 1961: SNCC Arrives in Albany.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/sncc-a...
Civil Rights Events, Albany Movement -- Filling the Jails
Students at the local Black college, Albany State, were anxious to launch protests against segregation. They were in a rebellious mood toward the conservative campus administration and pushed the college president to address their demands about conditions on campus.
Sherrod and Reagon concluded that it was important to create a mass movement in the regional metropolis before working in the rurals where Black people made up a majority of the population. The duo from SNCC began conversations with students on Albany State’s campus but were quickly kicked out by a nervous school administration. But it was too late, Sherrod wrote, “We delivered the idea that would disrupt the system” (October 4).
Charles Sherrod ... slowly gained the confidence of the people by living with them, working in the community, and giving voice to the aspirations of the people. His work there, along with Charles Jones and Cordell Reagon, was a model of the way an "outside" group works with a community anywhere in the South. Never in a hurry, the task was to lift fear that engulfed the Albany Negroes, continue the momentum of the previous spring, and teach the people what their rights and potentialities might be. The leadership was one of encouragement from the middle, rather than a take charge one (Browning 1).
On November 1, Sherrod and Reagon went to the Greyhound terminal to witness the results of an attempt made by Albany State College students to integrate waiting room facilities.
When the SNCC pair arrived, however, they saw only a small group of Albany policemen, headed by Chief Pritchett. The pair was confused over the lack of student support. The absence of student protestors resulted from a Youth Council decision to postpone the test without informing Sherrod or Reagon. As a result, the SNCC secretaries quietly slipped out of the terminal.
Leaving the station, Sherrod and Reagon found the Albany community in a state of chaos. … The fear of openly defying the status quo of segregation motivated inaction in the community, even among supposed student supporters. Sherrod and Reagon eventually prodded nine students back to the Trailways bus station, but only with intense cajoling. Arriving at the station, the nine students attempted to seat themselves in the white waiting room. Almost immediately, Chief Pritchett ordered the students to disperse. Obeying, the students retreated back to town to confer with Sherrod and Reagon. Though extremely minor by later standards of protest, the students’ attempt to desegregate the station led to widespread black interest in protest activities, even among adults who had previously shunned the methods of the SNCC secretaries. The SNCC workers’ organizing had elicited fear and panic, but the students’ action led to black community support that was otherwise absent. In order to challenge the city from a legal standpoint, the NAACP and other Albany adults agreed to support a test arrest at the station.
Realizing the need to organize the community, the leaders of SNCC, the NAACP, and other groups met on November 17, 1961, to form what became known as the Albany Movement. The Movement selected William G. Anderson, a local doctor, to head the Movement as its president, recommended by C.B. King, a well-respected black lawyer. C.B. King may have been motivated by the fact that Anderson “was a relative newcomer and had not had the opportunity to make a lot of enemies around town” (Nelligan 7-9).
Interviewed in 1985, Dr. Anderson recalled: “A number of the civic and social organizations sort of got together and—and decided all in one night—the people in the community apparently are ready for whatever is happening. We are their leaders. And we are not ready for what the people appear to be ready for. So we decided at that time it would be better for us local leaders to give some direction to whatever is happening than for these outsiders to give that direction. So we decided … then that we representatives of the established civic and social organizations of the city of Albany should bind ourselves together. And we should become a part of what was happening, because the people apparently are ready for a change, and we their leaders have not taken the lead in this endeavor. And so after a good deal of conversation about what shall we call ourselves? And naturally we tossed around all sorts of names, but when the … words ‘Albany Movement’ were spoken it sort of took hold at that time” (Interview 3).
Up to this point, protest in Albany remained limited to actions by students trained and counseled by Sherrod and Reagon. The small scale protest that resulted at the Trailways terminal on November 1 and the ensuing student enthusiasm made many blacks feel obligated to support their own children by joining in on protest activities.
“The kids were going to do it anyway,” local parent and later activist Irene Wright stated. “They were holding their own mass meetings and making plans…we didn’t want them to have to do it alone.” While many black adults favored the legal action and negotiation promulgated by the NAACP to direct positive action, they nevertheless supported SNCC protest because of their children’s involvement in it. As a result, a committee was formed that]“petitioned the City Council to set into place some mechanism…of desegregating the City of Albany,” as well as preparing for more positive action, such as demonstrations and arrests. The support of the parents was important, but there existed a great divide between support and dedication. More reluctant members of the community now supported the Movement. The question now would be whether that support would translate into action.
…
Headed by Mayor Asa Kelley, the City Council had a notable history of ignoring any and every complaint brought before it by the black community. Prior to the Albany Movement, most of these complaints centered around maintenance of public works in African-American communities, such as unpaved streets and sidewalks. The pattern of ignoring black community issues continued, as Anderson’s initial audience with the City Council ended in him being told that the council “determined that there is no common ground for discussion, and did not deem it appropriate to have it as an agenda item.” The next day the local newspaper, the Albany Herald, answered for the white establishment even more emphatically. The paper characterized Anderson as a hothead, and decried any attempt to change the status quo in Albany, going so far as to list Anderson’s address and telephone number for any “interested” party, which would be used by whites to threaten and bother Anderson throughout his time as president of the Albany Movement (Nelligan 10, 12-13).
On November 22, just a few days before the Thanksgiving holiday, three young people from the NAACP youth council and two SNCC volunteers from Albany State were arrested in the Trailways terminal. The NAACP youth council members were released on bond immediately after their arrest. However, SNCC volunteers Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall declined bail and chose to remain in jail over the holidays to dramatize their demand for justice.
After the holiday [November 25], more than 100 Albany State students marched from campus to the courthouse where they protested the arrest of Gober and Hall. A mass meeting–the first in Albany’s history–occurred at Mt. Zion Baptist church to protest the arrests, segregation, and decades of racial discrimination. The music, especially, was powerful, mirroring the Movement that had begun to emerge. Reflecting on this moment, Bernice Johnson Reagon [Cordell Reagon’s future wife] said, “When I opened my mouth and began to sing, there was a force and power within myself I had never heard before. Somehow this music … released a kind of power and required a level of concentrated energy I did not know I had” (Albany 2).
The meeting and the march were held after the SNCC notified the Department of Justice that the city of Albany did not follow the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling which prohibited discrimination in interstate bus and railway stations (Movement 1).
With the community now energized, recently arrived SNCC field secretary Charles Jones met with Sherrod and Reagon to discuss their next move. The challenge faced now by the organizers was how best to maintain the assault upon Albany’s segregation without alienating more cautious and conservative members of the movement, who still favored petitioning the city council. Should SNCC push too hard, they feared being branded as agitators. Community support was not yet so strong as to permit the SNCC members to call for demonstrations that required mass arrests and filling the jail. On the other hand, the men did worry that if they did not push hard enough, the Movement would lose enthusiasm rapidly. Sherrod, Reagon, and Jones decided to appeal for outside support. … The SNCC workers settled on the solution of asking James Forman, executive director of SNCC, to organize a Freedom Ride to Albany in an attempt to raise and maintain community support. Forman agreed, and enlisted eight others to join him in integrating Albany’s interstate terminal. By using the Freedom Riders, Sherrod, Reagon, and Jones hoped to avoid charges of provocation, while maintaining the enthusiasm for protest in the Albany community. …
On December 10, 1961, nine Freedom Riders from Atlanta arrived at the Albany Trailways bus terminal and were met by a crowd of approximately three hundred black onlookers and a squad of Albany policemen. Chief Pritchett arrested the riders without incident, telling the press that white Albany would “not stand for these troublemakers coming into our city for the sole purpose of disturbing the peace and quiet in the city of Albany,” framing the city’s opposition in domestic rather than racial rhetoric. The arrests resulted in the desired galvanization of the black community. The following day, mass meetings filled Shiloh Baptist and Mount Zion Churches. With the continuation of support, movement leaders, specifically the SNCC secretaries, began implementing their ultimate strategy of filling the jail in order to force the city into negotiations (Nelligan 13-14).
That night we had a meeting of the Albany Movement at which time we decided that we would not let these people stay in jail alone, we would fill up the jails. That next morning, at breakfast, I [Dr. Anderson] was advising my wife and my kids that their father and husband would very likely wind up in jail before the week was out, because the Albany Movement had decided that the best way to respond to first ignoring the petition of the Albany Movement, and secondly to arresting these Freedom Riders, the… the most appropriate response would be mass demonstrations. And I said, "I'll probably wind up in jail, and I want you kids to understand why this is being done" (Interview 4).
Leaders called for volunteers to march on city hall the following morning. Privately, Sherrod recognized the importance of getting people into jail and keeping them there, and evidence suggests that he told his closest supporters of this fact. This “jail, no bail” strategy, however, was evidently not shared with the masses assembled in Shiloh and Mount Zion, or even with other members of the movement. Anderson, while fully expecting to be arrested himself, stated “we had no provisions for these people going to jail because we did not anticipate mass arrests.” While Anderson acknowledged the strategy of filling the jails, he also was not prepared for mass arrests. It is likely Anderson believed that few arrests would be necessary in order to completely swamp the jail facilities, and that the arrest of the movement leaders and a few others would compromise the Albany police department’s ability to make arrests. It is unclear how many of those preparing to march were aware that they might be arrested. The last time the black community marched to city hall, the police arrested no one, and it is possible that many assumed that the same would be true.
This is significant because for African Americans living in Albany, and in southwest Georgia in general, arrest and jail represented personal endangerment. Anderson communicated the public opinion of jailing, stating “You have to understand that going to jail was probably one of the most feared things in rural Georgia. There were many blacks who were arrested in small towns in Georgia never to be heard from again… going to jail was no small thing.” Horrible conditions in local jails were well known to many, and it is important that many who agreed to march initially may have done so without preparation for extended stays in jail, which placed strain upon people economically, families especially. … the Movement was poised to test the resolve of the community through a baptism of fire, namely by sending hundreds of supporters to prison.
The following day, over four hundred people marched to city hall in downtown Albany, protesting the arrest of the Freedom Riders. The city gave the marchers permission to circle the block twice, and when the marchers refused to stop after the allotted distance, Pritchett ordered the protestors arrested. Herding the protestors into the alley between police headquarters, Pritchett arrested 267 protestors, including Sherrod and Reagon, and many of their young supporters (Nelligan 15-16).
Dr. Anderson narrated: But on this Monday morning following the arrests on Sunday, we met at a church, and we started a march downtown, and we were going to walk around the courthouse and go back to the church. We made it around the first time and I was at the head of the line with my wife. But after we made it around the first time not getting arrested I went on to my office, but the group went around a second time to make this impression that we are united behind these people that you have unjustly arrested. But the second time around they were arrested. And some 700 were arrested before they stopped (Interview 5).
The Movement continued to hold meetings in Shiloh and Mount Zion, sending two hundred and two protestors to jail the following day. In response to these marches, Pritchett informed the press that “We can’t tolerate the NAACP or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or any other ‘nigger’ organization to take over this town with mass demonstrations.”
Despite almost five hundred arrests since the Freedom Ride, the Albany jail was not full. This presented a problem for the “jail, no bail” strategy of the Movement. Pritchett had not been forced to turn away those whom he had arrested and therefore would not soon be forced into concessions. Pritchett, who had been warned of the possibility of mass marches, had devised a plan to ensure that his jail would never be full. Pritchett planned to use jails in the surrounding counties to house Albany prisoners should their number threaten to swamp his facilities. As he stated, “plans had been made where we had the capability of 10,000 prisoners, and never put one in our city jail.” As Pritchett himself attested, the protestors “were to be shipped out to surrounding cities in a circle…we had fifteen miles, twenty five miles, forty five miles, on up to about seventy miles that we could ship prisoners to.” Pritchett had seen to it that Albany would not be required to pay for the prisoners to be housed in other jails, as local law enforcement had agreed to absorb the cost so as to protect the segregationist cause. Pritchett did insist that his own men police the jails themselves, however, in order to maintain control over Albany prisoners. This maneuver dealt the Movement a significant setback, as no one conceived of Pritchett’s ability to increase his jail capacity this drastically.
For many of those arrested the realization that they were going to jail not in their hometown of Albany but rather in outlying areas such as “Bad” Baker County struck terror into their hearts. Prison conditions were harsh, with jail cells packed to many times their intended capacity. One woman described her cell in the Camilla jail designed to accommodate twenty prisoners being packed with over eighty-eight women. Andrew Young, describing Albany jail conditions as “harrowing,” described jailors refusing to heat the jail in the winter, and raising the heat and closing the windows on hot days. James Forman reported that many of those jailed spent most of their time “wondering when they would get out of jail,” suggesting that the expectation of staying in jail was not one most people were aware of. Some voiced their astonishment when they werearrested. One young woman stated “I didn’t expect to go to jail for kneeling and praying at city hall.” The misery of sitting in jail cells far from home sapped the resolve of many of those who initially agreed to march and risk arrest. Along with the fact that many of those arrested did not expect to be, the mass jailing of Albany blacks presented the Movement with an enormous strategic problem. The infeasibility of filling the Albany jail meant that the basic strategy proposed by SNCC and supported by the Movement could not be successful. While admirable, the suffering of Albany residents in jail accomplished little and represented an exercise in futility. This lack of concrete result would have a profound effect on the consciousness of the Albany African-American community (Nelligan 16-18).
Works cited:
“Albany Movement formed.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/albany...
Browning, Joan C. “Conflicting Memories of the Albany Freedom Ride and Albany Movement: An excerpt from: Who, What, When, Where? — Success or Failure?” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/comm/00albany.htm
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
“The Albany Movement.” African American Civil Rights Movement. Web. http://www.african-american-civil-rig...
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“October 1961: SNCC Arrives in Albany.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/sncc-a...
Sherrod and Reagon concluded that it was important to create a mass movement in the regional metropolis before working in the rurals where Black people made up a majority of the population. The duo from SNCC began conversations with students on Albany State’s campus but were quickly kicked out by a nervous school administration. But it was too late, Sherrod wrote, “We delivered the idea that would disrupt the system” (October 4).
Charles Sherrod ... slowly gained the confidence of the people by living with them, working in the community, and giving voice to the aspirations of the people. His work there, along with Charles Jones and Cordell Reagon, was a model of the way an "outside" group works with a community anywhere in the South. Never in a hurry, the task was to lift fear that engulfed the Albany Negroes, continue the momentum of the previous spring, and teach the people what their rights and potentialities might be. The leadership was one of encouragement from the middle, rather than a take charge one (Browning 1).
On November 1, Sherrod and Reagon went to the Greyhound terminal to witness the results of an attempt made by Albany State College students to integrate waiting room facilities.
When the SNCC pair arrived, however, they saw only a small group of Albany policemen, headed by Chief Pritchett. The pair was confused over the lack of student support. The absence of student protestors resulted from a Youth Council decision to postpone the test without informing Sherrod or Reagon. As a result, the SNCC secretaries quietly slipped out of the terminal.
Leaving the station, Sherrod and Reagon found the Albany community in a state of chaos. … The fear of openly defying the status quo of segregation motivated inaction in the community, even among supposed student supporters. Sherrod and Reagon eventually prodded nine students back to the Trailways bus station, but only with intense cajoling. Arriving at the station, the nine students attempted to seat themselves in the white waiting room. Almost immediately, Chief Pritchett ordered the students to disperse. Obeying, the students retreated back to town to confer with Sherrod and Reagon. Though extremely minor by later standards of protest, the students’ attempt to desegregate the station led to widespread black interest in protest activities, even among adults who had previously shunned the methods of the SNCC secretaries. The SNCC workers’ organizing had elicited fear and panic, but the students’ action led to black community support that was otherwise absent. In order to challenge the city from a legal standpoint, the NAACP and other Albany adults agreed to support a test arrest at the station.
Realizing the need to organize the community, the leaders of SNCC, the NAACP, and other groups met on November 17, 1961, to form what became known as the Albany Movement. The Movement selected William G. Anderson, a local doctor, to head the Movement as its president, recommended by C.B. King, a well-respected black lawyer. C.B. King may have been motivated by the fact that Anderson “was a relative newcomer and had not had the opportunity to make a lot of enemies around town” (Nelligan 7-9).
Interviewed in 1985, Dr. Anderson recalled: “A number of the civic and social organizations sort of got together and—and decided all in one night—the people in the community apparently are ready for whatever is happening. We are their leaders. And we are not ready for what the people appear to be ready for. So we decided at that time it would be better for us local leaders to give some direction to whatever is happening than for these outsiders to give that direction. So we decided … then that we representatives of the established civic and social organizations of the city of Albany should bind ourselves together. And we should become a part of what was happening, because the people apparently are ready for a change, and we their leaders have not taken the lead in this endeavor. And so after a good deal of conversation about what shall we call ourselves? And naturally we tossed around all sorts of names, but when the … words ‘Albany Movement’ were spoken it sort of took hold at that time” (Interview 3).
Up to this point, protest in Albany remained limited to actions by students trained and counseled by Sherrod and Reagon. The small scale protest that resulted at the Trailways terminal on November 1 and the ensuing student enthusiasm made many blacks feel obligated to support their own children by joining in on protest activities.
“The kids were going to do it anyway,” local parent and later activist Irene Wright stated. “They were holding their own mass meetings and making plans…we didn’t want them to have to do it alone.” While many black adults favored the legal action and negotiation promulgated by the NAACP to direct positive action, they nevertheless supported SNCC protest because of their children’s involvement in it. As a result, a committee was formed that]“petitioned the City Council to set into place some mechanism…of desegregating the City of Albany,” as well as preparing for more positive action, such as demonstrations and arrests. The support of the parents was important, but there existed a great divide between support and dedication. More reluctant members of the community now supported the Movement. The question now would be whether that support would translate into action.
…
Headed by Mayor Asa Kelley, the City Council had a notable history of ignoring any and every complaint brought before it by the black community. Prior to the Albany Movement, most of these complaints centered around maintenance of public works in African-American communities, such as unpaved streets and sidewalks. The pattern of ignoring black community issues continued, as Anderson’s initial audience with the City Council ended in him being told that the council “determined that there is no common ground for discussion, and did not deem it appropriate to have it as an agenda item.” The next day the local newspaper, the Albany Herald, answered for the white establishment even more emphatically. The paper characterized Anderson as a hothead, and decried any attempt to change the status quo in Albany, going so far as to list Anderson’s address and telephone number for any “interested” party, which would be used by whites to threaten and bother Anderson throughout his time as president of the Albany Movement (Nelligan 10, 12-13).
On November 22, just a few days before the Thanksgiving holiday, three young people from the NAACP youth council and two SNCC volunteers from Albany State were arrested in the Trailways terminal. The NAACP youth council members were released on bond immediately after their arrest. However, SNCC volunteers Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall declined bail and chose to remain in jail over the holidays to dramatize their demand for justice.
After the holiday [November 25], more than 100 Albany State students marched from campus to the courthouse where they protested the arrest of Gober and Hall. A mass meeting–the first in Albany’s history–occurred at Mt. Zion Baptist church to protest the arrests, segregation, and decades of racial discrimination. The music, especially, was powerful, mirroring the Movement that had begun to emerge. Reflecting on this moment, Bernice Johnson Reagon [Cordell Reagon’s future wife] said, “When I opened my mouth and began to sing, there was a force and power within myself I had never heard before. Somehow this music … released a kind of power and required a level of concentrated energy I did not know I had” (Albany 2).
The meeting and the march were held after the SNCC notified the Department of Justice that the city of Albany did not follow the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling which prohibited discrimination in interstate bus and railway stations (Movement 1).
With the community now energized, recently arrived SNCC field secretary Charles Jones met with Sherrod and Reagon to discuss their next move. The challenge faced now by the organizers was how best to maintain the assault upon Albany’s segregation without alienating more cautious and conservative members of the movement, who still favored petitioning the city council. Should SNCC push too hard, they feared being branded as agitators. Community support was not yet so strong as to permit the SNCC members to call for demonstrations that required mass arrests and filling the jail. On the other hand, the men did worry that if they did not push hard enough, the Movement would lose enthusiasm rapidly. Sherrod, Reagon, and Jones decided to appeal for outside support. … The SNCC workers settled on the solution of asking James Forman, executive director of SNCC, to organize a Freedom Ride to Albany in an attempt to raise and maintain community support. Forman agreed, and enlisted eight others to join him in integrating Albany’s interstate terminal. By using the Freedom Riders, Sherrod, Reagon, and Jones hoped to avoid charges of provocation, while maintaining the enthusiasm for protest in the Albany community. …
On December 10, 1961, nine Freedom Riders from Atlanta arrived at the Albany Trailways bus terminal and were met by a crowd of approximately three hundred black onlookers and a squad of Albany policemen. Chief Pritchett arrested the riders without incident, telling the press that white Albany would “not stand for these troublemakers coming into our city for the sole purpose of disturbing the peace and quiet in the city of Albany,” framing the city’s opposition in domestic rather than racial rhetoric. The arrests resulted in the desired galvanization of the black community. The following day, mass meetings filled Shiloh Baptist and Mount Zion Churches. With the continuation of support, movement leaders, specifically the SNCC secretaries, began implementing their ultimate strategy of filling the jail in order to force the city into negotiations (Nelligan 13-14).
That night we had a meeting of the Albany Movement at which time we decided that we would not let these people stay in jail alone, we would fill up the jails. That next morning, at breakfast, I [Dr. Anderson] was advising my wife and my kids that their father and husband would very likely wind up in jail before the week was out, because the Albany Movement had decided that the best way to respond to first ignoring the petition of the Albany Movement, and secondly to arresting these Freedom Riders, the… the most appropriate response would be mass demonstrations. And I said, "I'll probably wind up in jail, and I want you kids to understand why this is being done" (Interview 4).
Leaders called for volunteers to march on city hall the following morning. Privately, Sherrod recognized the importance of getting people into jail and keeping them there, and evidence suggests that he told his closest supporters of this fact. This “jail, no bail” strategy, however, was evidently not shared with the masses assembled in Shiloh and Mount Zion, or even with other members of the movement. Anderson, while fully expecting to be arrested himself, stated “we had no provisions for these people going to jail because we did not anticipate mass arrests.” While Anderson acknowledged the strategy of filling the jails, he also was not prepared for mass arrests. It is likely Anderson believed that few arrests would be necessary in order to completely swamp the jail facilities, and that the arrest of the movement leaders and a few others would compromise the Albany police department’s ability to make arrests. It is unclear how many of those preparing to march were aware that they might be arrested. The last time the black community marched to city hall, the police arrested no one, and it is possible that many assumed that the same would be true.
This is significant because for African Americans living in Albany, and in southwest Georgia in general, arrest and jail represented personal endangerment. Anderson communicated the public opinion of jailing, stating “You have to understand that going to jail was probably one of the most feared things in rural Georgia. There were many blacks who were arrested in small towns in Georgia never to be heard from again… going to jail was no small thing.” Horrible conditions in local jails were well known to many, and it is important that many who agreed to march initially may have done so without preparation for extended stays in jail, which placed strain upon people economically, families especially. … the Movement was poised to test the resolve of the community through a baptism of fire, namely by sending hundreds of supporters to prison.
The following day, over four hundred people marched to city hall in downtown Albany, protesting the arrest of the Freedom Riders. The city gave the marchers permission to circle the block twice, and when the marchers refused to stop after the allotted distance, Pritchett ordered the protestors arrested. Herding the protestors into the alley between police headquarters, Pritchett arrested 267 protestors, including Sherrod and Reagon, and many of their young supporters (Nelligan 15-16).
Dr. Anderson narrated: But on this Monday morning following the arrests on Sunday, we met at a church, and we started a march downtown, and we were going to walk around the courthouse and go back to the church. We made it around the first time and I was at the head of the line with my wife. But after we made it around the first time not getting arrested I went on to my office, but the group went around a second time to make this impression that we are united behind these people that you have unjustly arrested. But the second time around they were arrested. And some 700 were arrested before they stopped (Interview 5).
The Movement continued to hold meetings in Shiloh and Mount Zion, sending two hundred and two protestors to jail the following day. In response to these marches, Pritchett informed the press that “We can’t tolerate the NAACP or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or any other ‘nigger’ organization to take over this town with mass demonstrations.”
Despite almost five hundred arrests since the Freedom Ride, the Albany jail was not full. This presented a problem for the “jail, no bail” strategy of the Movement. Pritchett had not been forced to turn away those whom he had arrested and therefore would not soon be forced into concessions. Pritchett, who had been warned of the possibility of mass marches, had devised a plan to ensure that his jail would never be full. Pritchett planned to use jails in the surrounding counties to house Albany prisoners should their number threaten to swamp his facilities. As he stated, “plans had been made where we had the capability of 10,000 prisoners, and never put one in our city jail.” As Pritchett himself attested, the protestors “were to be shipped out to surrounding cities in a circle…we had fifteen miles, twenty five miles, forty five miles, on up to about seventy miles that we could ship prisoners to.” Pritchett had seen to it that Albany would not be required to pay for the prisoners to be housed in other jails, as local law enforcement had agreed to absorb the cost so as to protect the segregationist cause. Pritchett did insist that his own men police the jails themselves, however, in order to maintain control over Albany prisoners. This maneuver dealt the Movement a significant setback, as no one conceived of Pritchett’s ability to increase his jail capacity this drastically.
For many of those arrested the realization that they were going to jail not in their hometown of Albany but rather in outlying areas such as “Bad” Baker County struck terror into their hearts. Prison conditions were harsh, with jail cells packed to many times their intended capacity. One woman described her cell in the Camilla jail designed to accommodate twenty prisoners being packed with over eighty-eight women. Andrew Young, describing Albany jail conditions as “harrowing,” described jailors refusing to heat the jail in the winter, and raising the heat and closing the windows on hot days. James Forman reported that many of those jailed spent most of their time “wondering when they would get out of jail,” suggesting that the expectation of staying in jail was not one most people were aware of. Some voiced their astonishment when they werearrested. One young woman stated “I didn’t expect to go to jail for kneeling and praying at city hall.” The misery of sitting in jail cells far from home sapped the resolve of many of those who initially agreed to march and risk arrest. Along with the fact that many of those arrested did not expect to be, the mass jailing of Albany blacks presented the Movement with an enormous strategic problem. The infeasibility of filling the Albany jail meant that the basic strategy proposed by SNCC and supported by the Movement could not be successful. While admirable, the suffering of Albany residents in jail accomplished little and represented an exercise in futility. This lack of concrete result would have a profound effect on the consciousness of the Albany African-American community (Nelligan 16-18).
Works cited:
“Albany Movement formed.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/albany...
Browning, Joan C. “Conflicting Memories of the Albany Freedom Ride and Albany Movement: An excerpt from: Who, What, When, Where? — Success or Failure?” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/comm/00albany.htm
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
“The Albany Movement.” African American Civil Rights Movement. Web. http://www.african-american-civil-rig...
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“October 1961: SNCC Arrives in Albany.” SNCC Digital Gateway. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/sncc-a...
Civil Rights Events -- Albany Movement -- Surmountable Difficulties?
Ain't gonna let nobody, Lordy, turn me 'round,
turn me round, turn me 'round.
Ain't gonna let nobody, Lordy, turn me 'round.
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', Lord,
marching up to freedom land (Mt. Zion 1).
Since the Albany Movement envisioned total desegregation, their tactics were diverse. Protestors held meetings, gave speeches, marched, held sit-ins, and organized rallies. Of all the tactics, however, there was one that became surprisingly effective, and that was singing. Singing, largely inspired by the role of music in African American Baptist churches, proved to be an extremely effective way to galvanize protestors, keep energy and morale high, and present a very non-threatening form of nonviolent protest (Muscato 1).
Rev. Prathia Hall participated in many mass meetings held at Albany's churches, and she describes her moving experience as follows:
"I was profoundly impacted by the Albany movement and the southwest Georgia project conducted by SNCC. It was my first experience of the deep South…the very first night, there was a mass meeting. The mass meeting itself was just pure power…you could hear the rhythm of the feet, and the clapping of the hands from the old prayer meeting tradition…people singing the old prayer songs…there was something about hearing those songs, and hearing that singing in Albany in the midst of a struggle for life against death, that was just the most powerful thing I'd ever experienced" (Faith 1).
Charles Sherrod described such a scene: “Tears filled the eyes of hard, grown men who had seen with their own eyes merciless atrocities committed…when we rose to sing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ nobody could imagine what kept the church on four corners” (Nelligan 19).
The a cappella singing that became the trademark and the unifying force of the civil rights movement was introduced at this church by three student "Freedom Singers"--Ruth A. Harris, Bernice Johnson, and Cordell Reagon (Mt. Zion 1).
Locally raised Rutha Harris described how she became a founding member of the Freedom Singers after discovering that she was” not free.”
My skills as a singer were discovered by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (“SNCC”) member, Cordell Reagon. Cordell heard me sing during a mass meeting and thought I was very good. Cordell was a field secretary for SNCC, and also a very gifted singer. He was trying to form a singing group to raise money for SNCC. We were called The Freedom Singers. We sang a cappella. The original group consisted of Cordell Reagon, Bernice Johnson (later Bernice Johnson Reagon), Charles Neblett and yours truly – me!
I joined the Albany Movement through SNCC. I was 21 and I was home in Albany for the summer. SNCC was organizing people to register to vote. I went to a meeting to learn about what they were doing.
Cordell met me while I was walking down the street and asked me if I wanted to be free. I said “What do you mean, do I want to be free? I am free.” I said this because my father, Reverend I. A. Harris, sheltered us from segregation. He built the house that I am living in now in 1932. He was a strong man and a respected member of the Black community. He was also respected by white people in town. As we said back then, “he didn’t take no wooden nickels.”
Well, he controlled what we were exposed to. He was a minister, so he told us that we could not go to the movies at all because he did not like the content. That meant we never went to a segregated movie theatre. If we wanted to go out to eat, he said, “No, we have a refrigerator, stove, kitchen table and good food right here. I am not spending money on eating out when you can eat right here.” That meant that we didn’t see any segregated restaurants.
If we couldn’t use the bathroom at a gas station, he took off and refused to buy gas there. I really thought I was free until I learned about the voter registration numbers in Albany. I thought, “I know there are more than 28 Black people who want to vote in this town.” That motivated me to start working with SNCC.
When I learned from the SNCC workers that people in Albany were afraid to register to vote, for fear of death, violence or losing their jobs, I realized that things were not as I thought they were in my life in Albany either. As I got more involved in the movement I came to understand that I could not go to the white areas of places that we marched to, like segregated waiting rooms in bus stations, bathrooms, and segregated restaurants. It brought it all home and I knew I wasn’t free either.
My mother agreed to let me travel with the Freedom Singers after I promised that I’d finish college once I was done working with SNCC. I left Florida A&M for the movement. I fulfilled my promise to my mother in 1970, when I graduated from Albany College.
…
Without the songs of the Civil Rights movement, there would not have been a movement in my opinion.
Yes, we were afraid. There was fear. If you are marching for voter registration and the police say halt, and you don’t, you know you will be arrested. After you were arrested, who knew what would happen? The police might kill you or harm you. We were afraid, but we kept going and sang freedom songs.
The songs directly addressed the situation we were facing and helped us move forward. The police said halt. These songs kept us moving (Stayed 1-3).
King returned to Albany on February 27, 1962, to stand trial for his arrest in December. The trial was a quick one, and despite the predetermined outcome, Judge A.N. Durden announced that he would issue a decision within the next six months. Meanwhile, King left Albany to resume his duties with the SCLC. In Albany, boycotts and sporadic arrests continued. The Albany Movement kept trying to talk and bargain with the city council and the police department with little success. The white establishment had little reason to consider any of the Movement’s proposals, as the boycott threat had already proved surmountable, and it appeared that the community was not eager to resume mass marches any time soon. Sporadic arrests did continued, but these were largely the result of so-called “test” arrests of protestors attempting to integrate public facilities (Nelligan 32).
The two leaders of the white supremacists were the police chief Laurie Pritchett and James H. Gray, “who owned Albany’s only newspaper, the Albany Herald, its only television station, a radio station, and who was a key member of its city commission. Although historians give Pritchett the lion’s share of credit for beating King at his own game, it was Gray who called the shots in Albany, and it was his media empire that played events up or down as he saw fit.”
Pritchett was the city’s point man, and he confounded both the press and the demonstrators. According to The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibhanoff, he looked every bit the Southern bubba cop and enjoyed playing the role for cameras. Large in stature and big bellied, he often addressed demonstrators while chewing on a piece of straw, and he liked to cock a smile at them before taking them politely to jail.
But the comparison ends there. Pritchett was also smart. He knew King was committed to non-violence, and he had spent time in the library studying Gandhian philosophy and tactics. He understood that if King could not provoke a confrontation, he would gain no moral ground in Albany. Pritchett was also mean. Once he told a reporter over beer that “There are three things I like to do: drink buttermilk, put niggers in jail, and kick reporters’ asses. …”
Behind Pritchett’s power was James H. Gray. Gray grew up affluent in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where his father was a lawyer and one of his neighbors was Norman Rockwell. He graduated from elite Dartmouth College, where he befriended a Harvard University basketball rival, Joseph Kennedy. According to The Race Beat, Gray sometimes visited the Kennedys and, after Joseph Kennedy died in World War II, he became close to the next oldest son, John. After leaving Dartmouth he wrote for the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant and later the New York Herald.
By then he had set his sights on Albany because of his wealthy wife, Dorothy Ellis, who was from the small Georgia city and whose father owned the Albany Herald and a plantation. … When he returned home [after World War II] he moved to Albany, purchased its only newspaper and began to build a media empire. He was also prominent in Georgia’s arch segregationist Democratic Party, where he became chair in 1958. That year he hosted his friends, then-Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife, for a weekend in Albany.
Although only a transplanted Southerner, Gray earned a reputation for his rabid defense of racial segregation. In the late 1950s, following the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregated public schools, he was one of a number of Southern editors openly hostile to any news coverage portraying the South in a negative light. Following the decision, moreover, a new organization known as the White Citizens Council (WCC) formed in Mississippi to fight segregation; chapters soon formed in every Deep South state. Unlike the Ku Klux Klan–whose members, by then, were typically working class or marginalized whites–the WCC was middle class. Its members were professional men, including bankers, lawyers, business owners, and some newspaper publishers.
…
When the Albany demonstrations began in late 1961, Gray knew what to do. He contacted the city’s mayor, Asa Carter, and Police Chief Pritchett to coordinate a strategy whose main principal was to avoid violence. Arrests yes, force no.
When King sat in jail a week before Christmas, Gray addressed the public through his own television station and announced that the movement was under the influence of a “cell of professional agitators” and Communists. He affirmed further that Albany’s racial system was one that “over the years has been peaceful and rewarding.” He called Pritchett and insisted that he negotiate King’s release, then phoned his friends in the Kennedy Administration to make sure there would be no federal intervention in Albany (King 1-3).
One of the major issues surrounding the Albany Movement’s 1961-1962 campaign was the lack of aid from the federal government. President John F. Kennedy and his administration promised that they were watching the situation in Albany closely; however, because of Pritchett’s use of arrests and avoidance of public violence, the federal government never felt enough pressure from American citizens to intervene. The lack of intervention by the Kennedy administration in this case reinforced the frustration and distrust that many civil rights demonstrators had for the federal government (Albany 2).
Dr. Anderson was definitely critical of Kennedy and the Justice Department.
Needless to say we were in constant contact with the federal government. Even from the time Dr. King initially came into Albany. Contact had been made with Attorney General Bob Kennedy, and he had sort of turned us over to Burke Marshall. And when Dr. King was coming in we requested some protection for him coming into town. Laurie Pritchett, I understand was contacted by Burke Marshall, and was requested to provide security for Dr. King, and initially Laurie Pritchett said that he couldn't do it. He couldn't guarantee the safety of Dr. King coming into town. So Burke Marshall indicated, if you can't then I'll send in enough federal marshals to do it, whereupon Laurie Pritchett decided, well maybe I can. But even we—we never at any time got any of the Justice Department officials to come in to my knowledge. Even as observers during the arrest or during the court hearings. There were FBI agents on the scene, but no one from the Justice Department that we thought would be there to protect our civil rights. We didn't have that.
I would have expected a representative from the Justice Department to be on the scene as an observer if nothing else because civil rights were being violated. For example, we were not permitted to—to demonstrate at all, even following all the guidelines that had been set forth by the city, we attempted picketing of—of selected stores in small numbers, widely spaced. Not blocking any ingress or egress, all the guidelines that were given, so that you could picket, we would do that and still got arrested. I was arrested on several occasions just walking down the street holding a piece of paper in my hand and under the pretense of passing out literature without a permit or something to that effect. I'm saying that Justice officials were not there as observers, and if they were there mind you they were not identified as such, and to my knowledge no action was taken relative to the violation of our civil right— (Interview 10).
When King and his supporters once again confronted the racists--most famously in this period in Albany, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala.--the president and his advisers responded by calling for the maintenance of "law and order" and investigating King's alleged Communist Party ties, rather than by attacking Jim Crow.
Despite their promises, the Kennedys claimed the government had no jurisdiction over the Jim Crow laws of Southern cities, and they told King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to await Congressional action.
…
King was blamed for the deal made with the city council in December that temporarily halted demonstrations, an agreement that the council did not honor. Albany Mayor Asa Kelly gloated he had forced an end to the protests with Jim Crow still intact. Even more humiliating, the Kennedy administration phoned Kelly to congratulate him on his handling of the crisis.
The administration's only words to King were warnings that two of his advisers, Jack O'Dell and Stanley Levison, were linked to the Communist Party and should be dropped. King bowed to pressure and asked O'Dell for his resignation as a paid SCLC staff member. O'Dell continued to be active in the organization as a volunteer.
King [later] criticized President Kennedy for his "lack of leadership" in civil rights issues. But King maintained his position that federal support was key to the movement's success--a position that would contribute to the final defeat at Albany (Sustar 1, 3-4).
Works cited:
“A Faith Forged in Albany.” This Far by Faith. Web. https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/jo...
“The Albany Movement campaigns for full integration in Georgia (Fall 1961- Summer 1962).” Global Nonviolent Acyion Database. Web. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/con...
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
King, Pamela Sterne. “From Albany to Birmingham.” Weld: Birmingham’s Newspaper. December 19, 2012. Web. https://weldbham.com/blog/2012/12/19/...
“Mt. Zion Baptist Church.” We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement. Nps.gov. Web. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilri...
Muscato, Christopher. “The Albany Movement: History, Events & Significance.” Study.com. Web. https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-...
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“She’s Still ‘Stayed on Freedom’: An Interview With Civil Rights Activist and Freedom Singer, Rutha Harris.” BlackHer Movement. Web. http://blackher.us/shes-still-stayed-...
Sustar, Lee. “King, nonviolence and the Albany Movement.” SocialistWorker.org. November 9, 2012. Web. https://socialistworker.org/2012/11/0...
turn me round, turn me 'round.
Ain't gonna let nobody, Lordy, turn me 'round.
I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', Lord,
marching up to freedom land (Mt. Zion 1).
Since the Albany Movement envisioned total desegregation, their tactics were diverse. Protestors held meetings, gave speeches, marched, held sit-ins, and organized rallies. Of all the tactics, however, there was one that became surprisingly effective, and that was singing. Singing, largely inspired by the role of music in African American Baptist churches, proved to be an extremely effective way to galvanize protestors, keep energy and morale high, and present a very non-threatening form of nonviolent protest (Muscato 1).
Rev. Prathia Hall participated in many mass meetings held at Albany's churches, and she describes her moving experience as follows:
"I was profoundly impacted by the Albany movement and the southwest Georgia project conducted by SNCC. It was my first experience of the deep South…the very first night, there was a mass meeting. The mass meeting itself was just pure power…you could hear the rhythm of the feet, and the clapping of the hands from the old prayer meeting tradition…people singing the old prayer songs…there was something about hearing those songs, and hearing that singing in Albany in the midst of a struggle for life against death, that was just the most powerful thing I'd ever experienced" (Faith 1).
Charles Sherrod described such a scene: “Tears filled the eyes of hard, grown men who had seen with their own eyes merciless atrocities committed…when we rose to sing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ nobody could imagine what kept the church on four corners” (Nelligan 19).
The a cappella singing that became the trademark and the unifying force of the civil rights movement was introduced at this church by three student "Freedom Singers"--Ruth A. Harris, Bernice Johnson, and Cordell Reagon (Mt. Zion 1).
Locally raised Rutha Harris described how she became a founding member of the Freedom Singers after discovering that she was” not free.”
My skills as a singer were discovered by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (“SNCC”) member, Cordell Reagon. Cordell heard me sing during a mass meeting and thought I was very good. Cordell was a field secretary for SNCC, and also a very gifted singer. He was trying to form a singing group to raise money for SNCC. We were called The Freedom Singers. We sang a cappella. The original group consisted of Cordell Reagon, Bernice Johnson (later Bernice Johnson Reagon), Charles Neblett and yours truly – me!
I joined the Albany Movement through SNCC. I was 21 and I was home in Albany for the summer. SNCC was organizing people to register to vote. I went to a meeting to learn about what they were doing.
Cordell met me while I was walking down the street and asked me if I wanted to be free. I said “What do you mean, do I want to be free? I am free.” I said this because my father, Reverend I. A. Harris, sheltered us from segregation. He built the house that I am living in now in 1932. He was a strong man and a respected member of the Black community. He was also respected by white people in town. As we said back then, “he didn’t take no wooden nickels.”
Well, he controlled what we were exposed to. He was a minister, so he told us that we could not go to the movies at all because he did not like the content. That meant we never went to a segregated movie theatre. If we wanted to go out to eat, he said, “No, we have a refrigerator, stove, kitchen table and good food right here. I am not spending money on eating out when you can eat right here.” That meant that we didn’t see any segregated restaurants.
If we couldn’t use the bathroom at a gas station, he took off and refused to buy gas there. I really thought I was free until I learned about the voter registration numbers in Albany. I thought, “I know there are more than 28 Black people who want to vote in this town.” That motivated me to start working with SNCC.
When I learned from the SNCC workers that people in Albany were afraid to register to vote, for fear of death, violence or losing their jobs, I realized that things were not as I thought they were in my life in Albany either. As I got more involved in the movement I came to understand that I could not go to the white areas of places that we marched to, like segregated waiting rooms in bus stations, bathrooms, and segregated restaurants. It brought it all home and I knew I wasn’t free either.
My mother agreed to let me travel with the Freedom Singers after I promised that I’d finish college once I was done working with SNCC. I left Florida A&M for the movement. I fulfilled my promise to my mother in 1970, when I graduated from Albany College.
…
Without the songs of the Civil Rights movement, there would not have been a movement in my opinion.
Yes, we were afraid. There was fear. If you are marching for voter registration and the police say halt, and you don’t, you know you will be arrested. After you were arrested, who knew what would happen? The police might kill you or harm you. We were afraid, but we kept going and sang freedom songs.
The songs directly addressed the situation we were facing and helped us move forward. The police said halt. These songs kept us moving (Stayed 1-3).
King returned to Albany on February 27, 1962, to stand trial for his arrest in December. The trial was a quick one, and despite the predetermined outcome, Judge A.N. Durden announced that he would issue a decision within the next six months. Meanwhile, King left Albany to resume his duties with the SCLC. In Albany, boycotts and sporadic arrests continued. The Albany Movement kept trying to talk and bargain with the city council and the police department with little success. The white establishment had little reason to consider any of the Movement’s proposals, as the boycott threat had already proved surmountable, and it appeared that the community was not eager to resume mass marches any time soon. Sporadic arrests did continued, but these were largely the result of so-called “test” arrests of protestors attempting to integrate public facilities (Nelligan 32).
The two leaders of the white supremacists were the police chief Laurie Pritchett and James H. Gray, “who owned Albany’s only newspaper, the Albany Herald, its only television station, a radio station, and who was a key member of its city commission. Although historians give Pritchett the lion’s share of credit for beating King at his own game, it was Gray who called the shots in Albany, and it was his media empire that played events up or down as he saw fit.”
Pritchett was the city’s point man, and he confounded both the press and the demonstrators. According to The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibhanoff, he looked every bit the Southern bubba cop and enjoyed playing the role for cameras. Large in stature and big bellied, he often addressed demonstrators while chewing on a piece of straw, and he liked to cock a smile at them before taking them politely to jail.
But the comparison ends there. Pritchett was also smart. He knew King was committed to non-violence, and he had spent time in the library studying Gandhian philosophy and tactics. He understood that if King could not provoke a confrontation, he would gain no moral ground in Albany. Pritchett was also mean. Once he told a reporter over beer that “There are three things I like to do: drink buttermilk, put niggers in jail, and kick reporters’ asses. …”
Behind Pritchett’s power was James H. Gray. Gray grew up affluent in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where his father was a lawyer and one of his neighbors was Norman Rockwell. He graduated from elite Dartmouth College, where he befriended a Harvard University basketball rival, Joseph Kennedy. According to The Race Beat, Gray sometimes visited the Kennedys and, after Joseph Kennedy died in World War II, he became close to the next oldest son, John. After leaving Dartmouth he wrote for the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant and later the New York Herald.
By then he had set his sights on Albany because of his wealthy wife, Dorothy Ellis, who was from the small Georgia city and whose father owned the Albany Herald and a plantation. … When he returned home [after World War II] he moved to Albany, purchased its only newspaper and began to build a media empire. He was also prominent in Georgia’s arch segregationist Democratic Party, where he became chair in 1958. That year he hosted his friends, then-Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife, for a weekend in Albany.
Although only a transplanted Southerner, Gray earned a reputation for his rabid defense of racial segregation. In the late 1950s, following the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregated public schools, he was one of a number of Southern editors openly hostile to any news coverage portraying the South in a negative light. Following the decision, moreover, a new organization known as the White Citizens Council (WCC) formed in Mississippi to fight segregation; chapters soon formed in every Deep South state. Unlike the Ku Klux Klan–whose members, by then, were typically working class or marginalized whites–the WCC was middle class. Its members were professional men, including bankers, lawyers, business owners, and some newspaper publishers.
…
When the Albany demonstrations began in late 1961, Gray knew what to do. He contacted the city’s mayor, Asa Carter, and Police Chief Pritchett to coordinate a strategy whose main principal was to avoid violence. Arrests yes, force no.
When King sat in jail a week before Christmas, Gray addressed the public through his own television station and announced that the movement was under the influence of a “cell of professional agitators” and Communists. He affirmed further that Albany’s racial system was one that “over the years has been peaceful and rewarding.” He called Pritchett and insisted that he negotiate King’s release, then phoned his friends in the Kennedy Administration to make sure there would be no federal intervention in Albany (King 1-3).
One of the major issues surrounding the Albany Movement’s 1961-1962 campaign was the lack of aid from the federal government. President John F. Kennedy and his administration promised that they were watching the situation in Albany closely; however, because of Pritchett’s use of arrests and avoidance of public violence, the federal government never felt enough pressure from American citizens to intervene. The lack of intervention by the Kennedy administration in this case reinforced the frustration and distrust that many civil rights demonstrators had for the federal government (Albany 2).
Dr. Anderson was definitely critical of Kennedy and the Justice Department.
Needless to say we were in constant contact with the federal government. Even from the time Dr. King initially came into Albany. Contact had been made with Attorney General Bob Kennedy, and he had sort of turned us over to Burke Marshall. And when Dr. King was coming in we requested some protection for him coming into town. Laurie Pritchett, I understand was contacted by Burke Marshall, and was requested to provide security for Dr. King, and initially Laurie Pritchett said that he couldn't do it. He couldn't guarantee the safety of Dr. King coming into town. So Burke Marshall indicated, if you can't then I'll send in enough federal marshals to do it, whereupon Laurie Pritchett decided, well maybe I can. But even we—we never at any time got any of the Justice Department officials to come in to my knowledge. Even as observers during the arrest or during the court hearings. There were FBI agents on the scene, but no one from the Justice Department that we thought would be there to protect our civil rights. We didn't have that.
I would have expected a representative from the Justice Department to be on the scene as an observer if nothing else because civil rights were being violated. For example, we were not permitted to—to demonstrate at all, even following all the guidelines that had been set forth by the city, we attempted picketing of—of selected stores in small numbers, widely spaced. Not blocking any ingress or egress, all the guidelines that were given, so that you could picket, we would do that and still got arrested. I was arrested on several occasions just walking down the street holding a piece of paper in my hand and under the pretense of passing out literature without a permit or something to that effect. I'm saying that Justice officials were not there as observers, and if they were there mind you they were not identified as such, and to my knowledge no action was taken relative to the violation of our civil right— (Interview 10).
When King and his supporters once again confronted the racists--most famously in this period in Albany, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala.--the president and his advisers responded by calling for the maintenance of "law and order" and investigating King's alleged Communist Party ties, rather than by attacking Jim Crow.
Despite their promises, the Kennedys claimed the government had no jurisdiction over the Jim Crow laws of Southern cities, and they told King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to await Congressional action.
…
King was blamed for the deal made with the city council in December that temporarily halted demonstrations, an agreement that the council did not honor. Albany Mayor Asa Kelly gloated he had forced an end to the protests with Jim Crow still intact. Even more humiliating, the Kennedy administration phoned Kelly to congratulate him on his handling of the crisis.
The administration's only words to King were warnings that two of his advisers, Jack O'Dell and Stanley Levison, were linked to the Communist Party and should be dropped. King bowed to pressure and asked O'Dell for his resignation as a paid SCLC staff member. O'Dell continued to be active in the organization as a volunteer.
King [later] criticized President Kennedy for his "lack of leadership" in civil rights issues. But King maintained his position that federal support was key to the movement's success--a position that would contribute to the final defeat at Albany (Sustar 1, 3-4).
Works cited:
“A Faith Forged in Albany.” This Far by Faith. Web. https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/jo...
“The Albany Movement campaigns for full integration in Georgia (Fall 1961- Summer 1962).” Global Nonviolent Acyion Database. Web. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/con...
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
King, Pamela Sterne. “From Albany to Birmingham.” Weld: Birmingham’s Newspaper. December 19, 2012. Web. https://weldbham.com/blog/2012/12/19/...
“Mt. Zion Baptist Church.” We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement. Nps.gov. Web. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilri...
Muscato, Christopher. “The Albany Movement: History, Events & Significance.” Study.com. Web. https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-...
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“She’s Still ‘Stayed on Freedom’: An Interview With Civil Rights Activist and Freedom Singer, Rutha Harris.” BlackHer Movement. Web. http://blackher.us/shes-still-stayed-...
Sustar, Lee. “King, nonviolence and the Albany Movement.” SocialistWorker.org. November 9, 2012. Web. https://socialistworker.org/2012/11/0...
Civil Rights Events -- Albany Movement -- Defeat
Judge A. N. Durden set Martin Luther King’s sentencing for July 10, 1962. Local leaders began fomenting interest among the community, scheduling mass meetings in Shiloh and Mount Zion in the days leading up to the decision. King and Abernathy were given the option of 45 days in prison and labor, or a $178 fine. Both men elected to serve the time, which brought a renewal of support for the Movement. Bill Hansen, a SNCC staff member, described the effect King’s incarceration had upon the community: “As much as we may disagree with MLK about the way him [sic] and SCLC do things, one has to admit that he can cause more hell to be raised by being in jail in one night than anyone else could if they bombed city hall” (Nelligan 32).
King explained from jail, “We chose to serve our time because we feel so deeply about the plight of more than 700 others who have yet to be tried…. We have experienced the racist tactics of attempting to bankrupt the movement in the South through excessive bail and extended court fights. The time has now come when we must practice civil disobedience in a true sense or delay our freedom thrust for long years” (Albany 4).
However, this enthusiasm did not translate well into community action. Despite pleading and exhortation from Sherrod and Reagon, only 32 out of over five hundred people assembled in the churches volunteered to march the next day. While attendance at mass meetings remained high, increasingly smaller numbers volunteered for jail. Support was high, but the dedication necessary to send hundreds of people to jail remained absent. The memory of long stays in dirty, crowded jail cells weighed heavily on the local population, who now realized that the strategy of mass marches would only be successful if they agreed to extended stays in jail, something that very few people were willing to do. Yet the Movement continued to press the strategy of mass marches despite the fact that anything less than total involvement of the black community rendered any arrests meaningless
The inability of the Movement to translate support into dedicated action led to increased frustration in the community. This frustration boiled over on the night of July 11, with over two hundred Albany blacks rioting outside a mass meeting held in Shiloh Baptist. Seeking an outlet for their anger, the mob settled on Albany policemen monitoring the situation, hurling rocks and debris at the assembled officers. Only the quick thinking of Pritchett saved the situation from escalating any further. The incident revealed that the Movement strategy of nonviolence, despite widespread education, was not being universally abided by..
…
Although Pritchett had maintained control due to his swift action, the white establishment realized that having King imprisoned in Albany represented a source of strength for the Movement. The city was putting tremendous resources into maintaining segregation, keeping the police force on duty for weeks at a time. The outbreak of mob violence against police the night before had reinforced the siege mentality in the minds of the city council. Mayor Kelley and his close allies in the business community knew that if King remained in jail for the duration of his sentence, it would make Albany a national arena for civil rights, something they could not allow. As a result, the city council arranged for B.C. Gardner, a black partner in Mayor Kelley’s law firm, to pay King and Abernathy’s fines anonymously. Although Pritchett expressed no knowledge of the event at the time, he later admitted that a coalition of city councilmen and blacks had come up with the scheme to get King out of jail. On July 12, a “well dressed Negro gentleman” arrived at the Albany city jail, paid the $175 fines for King and Abernathy and left. King recalled being told to dress in civilian clothes and being led to Pritchett’s office, who informed them that they were free to go. When King protested that he had no desire to do so, Pritchett replied “God knows, Reverend, I don’t want you in my jail.” King declared his displeasure at being released from jail, but did not immediately seek re-arrest. To the community, King had again promised to stay in jail, only to emerge after a short time. Some people still remained in prisons in Albany, Camilla, Americus, and other surrounding towns, unable to afford bail or the ability to post security bond. The reaction among the black community was overwhelmingly negative. Pritchett himself noted that King suffered a great loss of respect in the black community as a result of his inability to stay in jail. Although his release was beyond his control, King had again said one thing and done another. Andrew Young reveals that “the talk going through all the Negro community was that Martin Luther King was going ‘chicken’.”
For King, the situation was becoming critical. … Mass dedication, in the form of jail volunteers and marchers, remained absent. All attempts to puncture the fortress of segregation, fortified by the stalling tactics of the City Council, failed. The Movement had reached a critical juncture. It had zero leverage with which to bargain. …
… King threatened on July 15 to resume mass marches and mass arrests if the city did not meet the movement’s minimum demands of dropping the charges against the original December marchers. Unless the week produced significant progress, King threatened to resume the direct action protests that had characterized the initial December protests. Mayor Kelley fired back harshly, reflecting the critical juncture the fight for segregation had reached. Labeling demonstrators as “law violatorsm,” Kelley summarily refused to negotiate with the Movement. This time, the city meant it. All negotiations … were halted. The rhetoric used by the city marked a change from earlier promises to “consider” and “look over” settlements. The city was openly calling King and the Movement’s hand, leaving them only one choice. The city realized that whatever ensued would prove a “decisive test” for King and the Movement. King responded that he saw no choice but to commence direct action protest.
Protests began the next day, with attempted integration of public facilities and sit-ins occurring at downtown drugstores. In response to this, Mayor Kelley began to strengthen his position, requesting an injunction barring King, Abernathy, Anderson, and other prominent Movement leaders from marching. … Returning to Albany on the night of July 20, King addressed a mass meeting, declaring his intent to march on city hall and face arrest again if need be. …
The following morning, Judge Elliot handed down his injunction against the Movement. Naming prominent leaders, the order barred those named from marching or engaging in protest activity in Albany. …
After intense consideration, King decided to obey the injunction and seek a reversal in a higher court. It is possible that King’s decision to honor the injunction demonstrated his hope that through the federal courts, the Movement could salvage some semblance of victory from Albany. This would take time, however, and SCLC attorney William Kunstler began working on an appeal. King’s decision not to march was met with outrage with the members of SNCC, who held little confidence in the government’s ability to do anything beneficial to the movement. SNCC was furious with King’s decision, and let him know it. Sherrod, Reagon, and other young SNCC workers verbally castigated King for his decision, accusing him of supplanting their local movement, making it a nationalized struggle for his personal gain. For his part, King told the SNCC secretaries he would wait for the order to be overturned by a higher court. Later, Sherrod would state he was never angry at King, only annoyed in the way that King’s methods upset his ability to organize. The SNCC staffer realized that King had de facto control, as it was obvious that Anderson received all of his direction from King. Wyatt T. Walker expressed his annoyance with SNCC’s constant attempts to undermine King’s power in the Movement. King made clear his intention to wait for the injunction to be overturned in a higher court.
July 25, 1961 marked the resumption of protest in Albany, as William Kunstler and Movement attorneys convinced appellate Judge Elbert P. Tuttle, Elliot’s direct superior, to overturn the injunction. King and the Movement announced plans to march the next day, calling on the black community to join them. Earlier that same day, however, the first instance of outstanding police brutality had incensed the community. Marion King, the wife of Albany Movement leader C.B. King, had visited a Camilla jail along with a friend, whose daughter was imprisoned there. Standing outside the jail fence trying to speak to those in the jail cell, a local sheriff ordered her to back away from the fence. When she did not comply fast enough, the sheriff and his deputy pushed her back, slapping and kicking her to the ground.
That evening, as King spoke to a crowd in Shiloh, a young Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worker, Marvin Rich, began to exhort young blacks to march on city hall that very night to protest the beating. Tensions were extremely high, as news of the beating carried a force the injunction overruling did not. … The anger of the community was impossible to quell, and as police attempted to arrest the marchers as they crossed Ogelthorpe Avenue, onlookers turned violent and began throwing bricks and rocks at police. The absence of Movement leaders, who were occupied holding mass meetings, meant they could not control the crowd. A policeman was injured, his jaw broken on a rock thrown by a black man. As the meeting in Shiloh let out, leaders attempted to stop the riot, but the damage had already been done. The violence again revealed the frustration in the community with nonviolent protest. Anger and opposition to segregation was widespread, but support for the Movement’s method of attacking it was not.
… The outbreak of violence further deteriorated the position of the Movement, who now risked being labeled the offending parties, even though many of those rioting were not part of the actual Movement … [which] was forced into reconciliatory measures, King calling off protests the following day in a “day of penance” for the violence of the previous night. …
Following the “day of penance,” King toured the local pool halls and bars, speaking of the need for nonviolence in the black community as a whole. He planned for marches two days later, and tried to enlist volunteers at a mass meeting held that night in Shiloh. He was only able to convince twenty six volunteers to march with him to city hall the following day. After asking to speak with the city council and being refused, the marchers kneeled and were arrested. This did not create the upswell of potential marchers the Movement had hope for, as only thirty seven volunteered for jail the following day. …In the days following King’s arrest, fewer and fewer people attended the mass meetings, with marches virtually halting. The city council sensed that the other side was close to surrender, and brought contempt charges against King, alleging that the demonstrations that defied the injunctions implicated him. Silence to requests for talks continued.
…
Virtually no protest occurred in the week leading up to King’s trial, set for August 10. On the trial date, King, Anderson, Abernathy, and Slater King were convicted of creating a disturbance. The white establishment took no chances, and all were fined $200 and given suspended jail sentences, meaning King could not use his punishment to garner outside support for the Movement. In response, the two planned marches were cancelled. King announced that he would be leaving Albany “to give the City Commission a chance to open ‘good faith’ negotiations with local Negro leaders” (Nelligan 32-46).
King agreed on 10 August 1962 to leave Albany and announce a halt to demonstrations, effectively ending his involvement in the Albany Movement. Although local efforts continued in conjunction with SNCC, the ultimate goals of the Movement were not met by the time of King’s departure. King blamed much of the failure on the campaign’s wide scope, stating in a 1965 interview, “The mistake I made there was to protest against segregation generally rather than against a single and distinct facet of it. Our protest was so vague that we got nothing, and the people were left very depressed and in despair.” The experiences in Albany, however, helped inform the strategy for the Birmingham Campaign that followed less than a year later. King acknowledged that “what we learned from our mistakes in Albany helped our later campaigns in other cities to be more effective” (Albany 5).
King recognized that an area that had little SCLC support would not welcome SCLC help; also that the authorities within the South could not be trusted and that a political approach would be less effective that a financial one – boycotts which would affect the financial well being of the white community (Trueman 3).
King and the civil rights movement were not the only ones to come out of Albany with lessons learned. The stubborn Albany Police Chief had taught the rest of the South how to successfully stave off the mighty nonviolence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Pritchett proved that if one commits to appearing to be nonviolent in front of the cameras one can use repressive violence behind the scenes and still exude an image of nonviolence. Emphasizing his use of mass arrests as a tactic instead of mass beatings, Pritchett preached to the nation how one can use nonviolence to combat nonviolence (Albany Campaigns 3).
Was the Albany campaign a flat out failure?
Charles Sherrod did not think so. He has stated that its greatest success was instilling in black people pride. "As many people as I know … now believe in themselves, … look at their children and see genius. They are no longer afraid to speak face to face with a white man or a white woman and look them dead in the eye like I'm looking at you as a human being" (Recalling 4).
Dr. Anderson declared the campaign “a qualified success.” Qualified in that at the time the movement came to an end, and it didn't come to an abrupt end. It was sort of phased out, the phasing out was marked by the cessation of the mass demonstration and the picketing. At that time, none of the facilities had been desegregated. The buses had become desegregated, the train station, the bus station. But these were being desegregated by federal edict. And it was not a voluntary move on the part of the people of Albany. But the lunch counters, there were no blacks employed as clerks in the stores. The parks and other public accommodations were not desegregated at the time the Albany Movement came to an end, end in the sense of no more mass demonstrations. But the Albany Movement was an overwhelming success in that first of all there was a change in the attitude of the people. The people who were involved in the movement, the people involved in the demonstrations because they had made a determination within their own minds that they would never accept that segregated society as it was, anymore. There was a change in attitude of the kids who saw their parents step into the forefront and lead the demonstrations and they were determined that they would never go through what their parents went through to get the recognition that they should have as citizens. Secondly, I think that the Albany Movement was a success in that it served as a trial or as a proving ground for subsequent civil rights movements. There would be those from all over the world that would look at Albany, they would look at the Albany Movement and how the people responded when they were… were led, and how they were able to identify the problems and address those problems in a very affirmative manner. So that we—we think that the Albany Movement was very meaningful in the total picture of the civil rights movement in that it gave some direction. The mistakes were not to be repeated that were made in Albany, for example, that settlement on a handshake if you would. That would never be repeated anytime in the future (Interview 15).
The Albany Movement began before King arrived and persisted long after King’s departure in defeat. Its history is not one of failure simply because King failed in southwest Georgia, but one of persistence and ultimately some success. Often forgotten is that the Albany Movement was the first mass movement of the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community. Mass meetings, protest marches and arrests continued in Albany in 1963. Sherrod and his integrated teams of SNCC workers expanded their efforts beyond Albany into the rural counties of Terrell, Lee, Sumter, Baker, and the rest of southwest Georgia, where they faced some of the worst white racist terrorism in the South. SNCC workers were beaten by law officers, shot at and wounded by night riders, and churches associated with their voter registration efforts were firebombed.
The story of the movement is not a linear tale. It was a hodgepodge of many local movements, each with its own beginning and its moment in the sun of national media attention. There are many threads connecting these movements besides the involvement of Martin Luther King (Interview: Re-evaluating 4).
Police chief Laurie Pritchett asked Dr. Anderson this question late during the Albany Movement campaign.
"Dr. Anderson, do you think this is the way to get white people to accept you?" And I said to him, "You will never know whether or not I would be acceptable to you if somehow we are not given the opportunity to get together." I believe that a lot of white people feared, mixing with blacks because they had never had the experience. And they had been taught all of their lives that blacks were somehow inferior, dirty, smelly, unintelligible and all of the bad things that could be spoken about any person. They had been told this. They were brought up in that environment; that blacks should be totally segregated. They should be denied access to public accommodations. And I think that blacks were more afraid of the unknown. Not of actually having experienced being in the presence of blacks as equals (Interview 14).
That problem persists.
Works cited:
“The Albany Movement Campaigns for Full Integration in Georgia (Fall 1961- Summer 1962).” Global Nonviolent Acyion Database. Web. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/con...
“Albany Movement.” Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Web. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/en...
“Interview:Re-evaluating the Albany Civil Rights Movement: Interview with Lee Formwalt.” DailyHistory.org. Web. https://dailyhistory.org/Interview:Re...
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“Recalling the History of the Albany Movement.” WALB10News. November 11, 2015. Web. http://www.walb.com/story/16047367/re...
Trueman, C. N. “Albany 1961.” historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site. March 27, 2015. Web. https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...
King explained from jail, “We chose to serve our time because we feel so deeply about the plight of more than 700 others who have yet to be tried…. We have experienced the racist tactics of attempting to bankrupt the movement in the South through excessive bail and extended court fights. The time has now come when we must practice civil disobedience in a true sense or delay our freedom thrust for long years” (Albany 4).
However, this enthusiasm did not translate well into community action. Despite pleading and exhortation from Sherrod and Reagon, only 32 out of over five hundred people assembled in the churches volunteered to march the next day. While attendance at mass meetings remained high, increasingly smaller numbers volunteered for jail. Support was high, but the dedication necessary to send hundreds of people to jail remained absent. The memory of long stays in dirty, crowded jail cells weighed heavily on the local population, who now realized that the strategy of mass marches would only be successful if they agreed to extended stays in jail, something that very few people were willing to do. Yet the Movement continued to press the strategy of mass marches despite the fact that anything less than total involvement of the black community rendered any arrests meaningless
The inability of the Movement to translate support into dedicated action led to increased frustration in the community. This frustration boiled over on the night of July 11, with over two hundred Albany blacks rioting outside a mass meeting held in Shiloh Baptist. Seeking an outlet for their anger, the mob settled on Albany policemen monitoring the situation, hurling rocks and debris at the assembled officers. Only the quick thinking of Pritchett saved the situation from escalating any further. The incident revealed that the Movement strategy of nonviolence, despite widespread education, was not being universally abided by..
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Although Pritchett had maintained control due to his swift action, the white establishment realized that having King imprisoned in Albany represented a source of strength for the Movement. The city was putting tremendous resources into maintaining segregation, keeping the police force on duty for weeks at a time. The outbreak of mob violence against police the night before had reinforced the siege mentality in the minds of the city council. Mayor Kelley and his close allies in the business community knew that if King remained in jail for the duration of his sentence, it would make Albany a national arena for civil rights, something they could not allow. As a result, the city council arranged for B.C. Gardner, a black partner in Mayor Kelley’s law firm, to pay King and Abernathy’s fines anonymously. Although Pritchett expressed no knowledge of the event at the time, he later admitted that a coalition of city councilmen and blacks had come up with the scheme to get King out of jail. On July 12, a “well dressed Negro gentleman” arrived at the Albany city jail, paid the $175 fines for King and Abernathy and left. King recalled being told to dress in civilian clothes and being led to Pritchett’s office, who informed them that they were free to go. When King protested that he had no desire to do so, Pritchett replied “God knows, Reverend, I don’t want you in my jail.” King declared his displeasure at being released from jail, but did not immediately seek re-arrest. To the community, King had again promised to stay in jail, only to emerge after a short time. Some people still remained in prisons in Albany, Camilla, Americus, and other surrounding towns, unable to afford bail or the ability to post security bond. The reaction among the black community was overwhelmingly negative. Pritchett himself noted that King suffered a great loss of respect in the black community as a result of his inability to stay in jail. Although his release was beyond his control, King had again said one thing and done another. Andrew Young reveals that “the talk going through all the Negro community was that Martin Luther King was going ‘chicken’.”
For King, the situation was becoming critical. … Mass dedication, in the form of jail volunteers and marchers, remained absent. All attempts to puncture the fortress of segregation, fortified by the stalling tactics of the City Council, failed. The Movement had reached a critical juncture. It had zero leverage with which to bargain. …
… King threatened on July 15 to resume mass marches and mass arrests if the city did not meet the movement’s minimum demands of dropping the charges against the original December marchers. Unless the week produced significant progress, King threatened to resume the direct action protests that had characterized the initial December protests. Mayor Kelley fired back harshly, reflecting the critical juncture the fight for segregation had reached. Labeling demonstrators as “law violatorsm,” Kelley summarily refused to negotiate with the Movement. This time, the city meant it. All negotiations … were halted. The rhetoric used by the city marked a change from earlier promises to “consider” and “look over” settlements. The city was openly calling King and the Movement’s hand, leaving them only one choice. The city realized that whatever ensued would prove a “decisive test” for King and the Movement. King responded that he saw no choice but to commence direct action protest.
Protests began the next day, with attempted integration of public facilities and sit-ins occurring at downtown drugstores. In response to this, Mayor Kelley began to strengthen his position, requesting an injunction barring King, Abernathy, Anderson, and other prominent Movement leaders from marching. … Returning to Albany on the night of July 20, King addressed a mass meeting, declaring his intent to march on city hall and face arrest again if need be. …
The following morning, Judge Elliot handed down his injunction against the Movement. Naming prominent leaders, the order barred those named from marching or engaging in protest activity in Albany. …
After intense consideration, King decided to obey the injunction and seek a reversal in a higher court. It is possible that King’s decision to honor the injunction demonstrated his hope that through the federal courts, the Movement could salvage some semblance of victory from Albany. This would take time, however, and SCLC attorney William Kunstler began working on an appeal. King’s decision not to march was met with outrage with the members of SNCC, who held little confidence in the government’s ability to do anything beneficial to the movement. SNCC was furious with King’s decision, and let him know it. Sherrod, Reagon, and other young SNCC workers verbally castigated King for his decision, accusing him of supplanting their local movement, making it a nationalized struggle for his personal gain. For his part, King told the SNCC secretaries he would wait for the order to be overturned by a higher court. Later, Sherrod would state he was never angry at King, only annoyed in the way that King’s methods upset his ability to organize. The SNCC staffer realized that King had de facto control, as it was obvious that Anderson received all of his direction from King. Wyatt T. Walker expressed his annoyance with SNCC’s constant attempts to undermine King’s power in the Movement. King made clear his intention to wait for the injunction to be overturned in a higher court.
July 25, 1961 marked the resumption of protest in Albany, as William Kunstler and Movement attorneys convinced appellate Judge Elbert P. Tuttle, Elliot’s direct superior, to overturn the injunction. King and the Movement announced plans to march the next day, calling on the black community to join them. Earlier that same day, however, the first instance of outstanding police brutality had incensed the community. Marion King, the wife of Albany Movement leader C.B. King, had visited a Camilla jail along with a friend, whose daughter was imprisoned there. Standing outside the jail fence trying to speak to those in the jail cell, a local sheriff ordered her to back away from the fence. When she did not comply fast enough, the sheriff and his deputy pushed her back, slapping and kicking her to the ground.
That evening, as King spoke to a crowd in Shiloh, a young Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worker, Marvin Rich, began to exhort young blacks to march on city hall that very night to protest the beating. Tensions were extremely high, as news of the beating carried a force the injunction overruling did not. … The anger of the community was impossible to quell, and as police attempted to arrest the marchers as they crossed Ogelthorpe Avenue, onlookers turned violent and began throwing bricks and rocks at police. The absence of Movement leaders, who were occupied holding mass meetings, meant they could not control the crowd. A policeman was injured, his jaw broken on a rock thrown by a black man. As the meeting in Shiloh let out, leaders attempted to stop the riot, but the damage had already been done. The violence again revealed the frustration in the community with nonviolent protest. Anger and opposition to segregation was widespread, but support for the Movement’s method of attacking it was not.
… The outbreak of violence further deteriorated the position of the Movement, who now risked being labeled the offending parties, even though many of those rioting were not part of the actual Movement … [which] was forced into reconciliatory measures, King calling off protests the following day in a “day of penance” for the violence of the previous night. …
Following the “day of penance,” King toured the local pool halls and bars, speaking of the need for nonviolence in the black community as a whole. He planned for marches two days later, and tried to enlist volunteers at a mass meeting held that night in Shiloh. He was only able to convince twenty six volunteers to march with him to city hall the following day. After asking to speak with the city council and being refused, the marchers kneeled and were arrested. This did not create the upswell of potential marchers the Movement had hope for, as only thirty seven volunteered for jail the following day. …In the days following King’s arrest, fewer and fewer people attended the mass meetings, with marches virtually halting. The city council sensed that the other side was close to surrender, and brought contempt charges against King, alleging that the demonstrations that defied the injunctions implicated him. Silence to requests for talks continued.
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Virtually no protest occurred in the week leading up to King’s trial, set for August 10. On the trial date, King, Anderson, Abernathy, and Slater King were convicted of creating a disturbance. The white establishment took no chances, and all were fined $200 and given suspended jail sentences, meaning King could not use his punishment to garner outside support for the Movement. In response, the two planned marches were cancelled. King announced that he would be leaving Albany “to give the City Commission a chance to open ‘good faith’ negotiations with local Negro leaders” (Nelligan 32-46).
King agreed on 10 August 1962 to leave Albany and announce a halt to demonstrations, effectively ending his involvement in the Albany Movement. Although local efforts continued in conjunction with SNCC, the ultimate goals of the Movement were not met by the time of King’s departure. King blamed much of the failure on the campaign’s wide scope, stating in a 1965 interview, “The mistake I made there was to protest against segregation generally rather than against a single and distinct facet of it. Our protest was so vague that we got nothing, and the people were left very depressed and in despair.” The experiences in Albany, however, helped inform the strategy for the Birmingham Campaign that followed less than a year later. King acknowledged that “what we learned from our mistakes in Albany helped our later campaigns in other cities to be more effective” (Albany 5).
King recognized that an area that had little SCLC support would not welcome SCLC help; also that the authorities within the South could not be trusted and that a political approach would be less effective that a financial one – boycotts which would affect the financial well being of the white community (Trueman 3).
King and the civil rights movement were not the only ones to come out of Albany with lessons learned. The stubborn Albany Police Chief had taught the rest of the South how to successfully stave off the mighty nonviolence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Pritchett proved that if one commits to appearing to be nonviolent in front of the cameras one can use repressive violence behind the scenes and still exude an image of nonviolence. Emphasizing his use of mass arrests as a tactic instead of mass beatings, Pritchett preached to the nation how one can use nonviolence to combat nonviolence (Albany Campaigns 3).
Was the Albany campaign a flat out failure?
Charles Sherrod did not think so. He has stated that its greatest success was instilling in black people pride. "As many people as I know … now believe in themselves, … look at their children and see genius. They are no longer afraid to speak face to face with a white man or a white woman and look them dead in the eye like I'm looking at you as a human being" (Recalling 4).
Dr. Anderson declared the campaign “a qualified success.” Qualified in that at the time the movement came to an end, and it didn't come to an abrupt end. It was sort of phased out, the phasing out was marked by the cessation of the mass demonstration and the picketing. At that time, none of the facilities had been desegregated. The buses had become desegregated, the train station, the bus station. But these were being desegregated by federal edict. And it was not a voluntary move on the part of the people of Albany. But the lunch counters, there were no blacks employed as clerks in the stores. The parks and other public accommodations were not desegregated at the time the Albany Movement came to an end, end in the sense of no more mass demonstrations. But the Albany Movement was an overwhelming success in that first of all there was a change in the attitude of the people. The people who were involved in the movement, the people involved in the demonstrations because they had made a determination within their own minds that they would never accept that segregated society as it was, anymore. There was a change in attitude of the kids who saw their parents step into the forefront and lead the demonstrations and they were determined that they would never go through what their parents went through to get the recognition that they should have as citizens. Secondly, I think that the Albany Movement was a success in that it served as a trial or as a proving ground for subsequent civil rights movements. There would be those from all over the world that would look at Albany, they would look at the Albany Movement and how the people responded when they were… were led, and how they were able to identify the problems and address those problems in a very affirmative manner. So that we—we think that the Albany Movement was very meaningful in the total picture of the civil rights movement in that it gave some direction. The mistakes were not to be repeated that were made in Albany, for example, that settlement on a handshake if you would. That would never be repeated anytime in the future (Interview 15).
The Albany Movement began before King arrived and persisted long after King’s departure in defeat. Its history is not one of failure simply because King failed in southwest Georgia, but one of persistence and ultimately some success. Often forgotten is that the Albany Movement was the first mass movement of the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community. Mass meetings, protest marches and arrests continued in Albany in 1963. Sherrod and his integrated teams of SNCC workers expanded their efforts beyond Albany into the rural counties of Terrell, Lee, Sumter, Baker, and the rest of southwest Georgia, where they faced some of the worst white racist terrorism in the South. SNCC workers were beaten by law officers, shot at and wounded by night riders, and churches associated with their voter registration efforts were firebombed.
The story of the movement is not a linear tale. It was a hodgepodge of many local movements, each with its own beginning and its moment in the sun of national media attention. There are many threads connecting these movements besides the involvement of Martin Luther King (Interview: Re-evaluating 4).
Police chief Laurie Pritchett asked Dr. Anderson this question late during the Albany Movement campaign.
"Dr. Anderson, do you think this is the way to get white people to accept you?" And I said to him, "You will never know whether or not I would be acceptable to you if somehow we are not given the opportunity to get together." I believe that a lot of white people feared, mixing with blacks because they had never had the experience. And they had been taught all of their lives that blacks were somehow inferior, dirty, smelly, unintelligible and all of the bad things that could be spoken about any person. They had been told this. They were brought up in that environment; that blacks should be totally segregated. They should be denied access to public accommodations. And I think that blacks were more afraid of the unknown. Not of actually having experienced being in the presence of blacks as equals (Interview 14).
That problem persists.
Works cited:
“The Albany Movement Campaigns for Full Integration in Georgia (Fall 1961- Summer 1962).” Global Nonviolent Acyion Database. Web. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/con...
“Albany Movement.” Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Web. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/en...
“Interview:Re-evaluating the Albany Civil Rights Movement: Interview with Lee Formwalt.” DailyHistory.org. Web. https://dailyhistory.org/Interview:Re...
“Interview with Dr. William Anderson.” Eyes on the Prize Interview. November 7, 1985. Washington University Digital Gateway Texts. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb...
Nelligan, Brendan Kevin. “Lessons of Albany: Civil Rights Protest in Albany, Georgia 1961-62.” Providence College: DigitalCommons@Providence. Fall 2009. Web. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu...
“Recalling the History of the Albany Movement.” WALB10News. November 11, 2015. Web. http://www.walb.com/story/16047367/re...
Trueman, C. N. “Albany 1961.” historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site. March 27, 2015. Web. https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...
