At the same hour, King was returning from nearby Lee County, where the first jolt of late-summer violence hastened the decline of the Albany Movement. Arsonists had just firebombed the Shady Grove Baptist Church, in which SNCC volunteers had conducted a registration meeting four days earlier. The Lee County sheriff completed his investigation within two hours, speculating that an electrical storm might have started the fire, but FBI agents pursued leads pointing clearly to political sabotage. All that remained of the tiny church was a lonely chimney, and the charred remains of the clapboard
...more
