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-movement-formed/

 

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/and0015.1042.003drwilliamganderson.html

“The Albany Movement.”  African American Civil Rights Movement.  Web.  http://www.african-american-civil-rights.org/albany-movement/

 

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/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=student_scholarship

 

“October 1961: SNCC Arrives in Albany.”  SNCC Digital Gateway.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/events/sncc-arrives-in-albany/



Civil Rights Events

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/charles-sherrod/

 

“Cordell Reagon.”  SNCC Digital Gateway.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/people/cordell-reagon/

 

Fletcher, Michael A.  “Vetrerans of the Movement Find Time Outstripping Its Gains.”  The Washington Post.  July 17, 1996.  Web.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/07/17/veterans-of-the-movement-find-time-outstripping-its-gains/67a73c26-b13f-4220-b050-d3d498894e4a/

 

“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/and0015.1042.003drwilliamganderson.html

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-nash-freedom-rider-civil-rights-movement.

 

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/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=student_scholarship

 

“October 1961: SNCC Arrives in Albany.”  SNCC Digital Gateway.  Web.  https://snccdigital.org/events/sncc-arrives-in-albany/



Civil Rights Events

Freedom Rides

Jackson, Mississippi, Parchman State Prison

 

Robert Kennedy was a close friend of Governor John Patterson of Alabama.   I had this long relationship with John Patterson …. He was our great pal in the South.  So he was doubly exercised at me – who was his friend and pal – to have involved him with suddenly surrounding this church with marshals and having marshals descend with no authority, he felt, on his cities… He couldn’t understand why the Kennedys were doing this to him.” (Simkin 7).

 

Recognizing that previous and new Freedom Riders were adamant about traveling by bus to Jackson, Mississippi, the next city along the original route that ended at New Orleans, Kennedy, talking over the telephone “seven or eight or twelve times each day” (Simkin 8), with Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland, reached a deal.  Kennedy would use no federal forces if Eastland would ensure that the Riders would not suffer mob violence. 

 

Interviewed in 1998, James Farmer, director of CORE, said this about the Kennedys.

 

The Kennedys meant well, but they did not feel it. They didn't know any blacks growing up - there were no blacks in their communities or going to their schools. But their inclinations were good. I had the impression in those years that Bobby was doing what had to be done for political reasons. He was very conscious of the fact that they had won a narrow election and he was afraid that if they antagonized the South, the Dixiecrats would cost them the next election. And he was found to be very, very cautious and very careful not to do that. But we changed the equation down there, so it became dangerous for him not to do anything (Simkin 9).

 

Two buses, a Greyhound and a Trailways, departed Montgomery for Jackson, Mississippi, May 24.  Rider William Mahoney, a nineteen-year-old black student at Howard University, observed:

 

Once across the (Mississippi) state line we passed a couple of police cars, which began to follow us. At our first stop the station was cordoned off a block in every direction. A police officer jumped on the bus and forbade anyone to move. One woman, who was a regular passenger, frantically tried to convince the police that she was not involved with us. After checking her ticket the police let her get off.

 

As we rolled toward Jackson, every blocked-off street, every back road taken, every change in speed caused our hearts to leap. Our arrival and speedy arrest in the white bus station in Jackson, when we refused to obey a policeman's order to move on, was a relief (Simkin 10).

 

They were given good protection as they entered the state, and no mob greeted them at the Jackson bus terminal. "As we walked through, the police just said, `Keep moving' and let us go through the white side," recalled Frederick Leonard. "We never got stopped. They just said `Keep moving,' and they passed us right on through the white terminal into the paddy wagon and into jail" (Cozzens 12).

 

Peter Ackerberg, white, 22, Antioch College student, interviewed years later, recalled his motivation and experience.

 

While he’d always talked a “big radical game,” he had never acted on his convictions. “What am I going to tell my children when they ask me about this time?” he recalled thinking. Boarding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, “I was pretty scared … The black guys and girls were singing....They were so spirited and so unafraid. They were really prepared to risk their lives.” Today, Ackerberg recalls acquiescing and saying “sir” to a jail official who was “pounding a blackjack.” Soon after, “I could hear the blackjack strike [rider C.T. Vivian’s] head and him shrieking; I don’t think he ever said ‘sir.’”

 

When activists arrived at the Jackson bus depot, police arrested blacks who refused to heed orders to stay out of white restrooms or vacate the white waiting room. And whites were arrested if they used “colored” facilities. Officials charged the riders with breach of peace, rather than breaking segregation laws. Freedom Riders responded with a strategy they called “jail, no bail”—a deliberate effort to clog the penal facilities

 

The dehumanizing process started as soon as we got there,” said Hank Thomas, [black, 19] a Marriott hotel franchise owner in Atlanta, who was then a sophomore at Howard University in Washington, D.C. “We were told to strip naked and then walked down this long corridor.... I’ll never forget [CORE director] Jim Farmer, a very dignified man ...walking down this long corridor naked...that is dehumanizing. And that was the whole point.” (Holmes 2-4).

 

The May 24 Freedom Riders were at the mercy of the local courts. On May 25, they were tried. As their attorney defended them, the judge turned his back. Once the attorney finished, he turned around and sentenced them to 60 days in the state penitentiary.

 

Using buses, planes, and trains, more Freedom Riders arrived in Jackson to continue the Freedom Ride, and they were arrested to, not under local or state segregation laws, but on charges of incitement to riot, breach of peace and failure to obey a police officer.  Freedom Riders continued to arrive in the South, and by the end of the summer, more than 300 had been arrested (Cozzens 13).

 

Convicted of violating the law, each Rider was fined $200.  Refusal to pay the fine brought each individual a sentence of 90 days in jail.

 

In an effort to intimidate the marchers, Mississippi officials transferred the now nearly one hundred men and women freedom riders to the state penitentiary at Parchman where they were subject to beatings and inedible food and repeatedly strip searched.  Prison officials confiscated the blankets and mattresses of all of the activists. When other demonstrators arrived in Jackson they were also arrested and sent to Parchman where they faced similar conditions  (Mack 3).

 

Jean Thompson, then a 19-year-old CORE worker, said she was one of the riders slapped by a penal official for failing to call him “sir.” An FBI investigation into the incident concluded that “no one was beaten …. “That said a lot to me about what actually happens in this country. It was eye-opening.” When prisoners were transferred from one facility to another, unexplained stops on remote dirt roads or the sight of curious onlookers peering into the transport trucks heightened fears. “We imagined every horror including an ambush by the KKK,” [said] rider Carol Silver …. To keep up their spirits, the prisoners sang freedom songs (Holmes 5).

 

The reputation of Parchman is that it’s a place that a lot of people get sent...and don’t come back,” former Freedom Rider Carol Ruth [later] told (Oprah] Winfrey.   … The struggles of the Freedom Riders garnered nationwide publicity. Rather than intimidate other activists, however, the brutality the riders encountered inspired others to take up the cause. Before long, dozens of Americans were volunteering to travel on Freedom Rides. In the end, an estimated 436 people took such rides (Nittle 2).

 

One such individual was Pauline Knight.  Part of the May 28 wave of Freedom Riders from the Nashville Student Movement, Pauline … escaped the violence of the earlier rides. Pauline Knight was a 20-year-old Tennessee State student when she was arrested in Jackson, MS. After being transferred to Hinds County Jail, she led a brief hunger strike among the female Riders.

 

 "I got up one morning in May and I said to my folks at home, ‘I won't be back today because I am a Freedom Rider.  … It was like a wave or a wind, and you didn't know where it was coming from but you knew you were supposed to be there. Nobody asked me, nobody told me."

 

Another individual was Joan Trumpauer Mulholland.  A 19-year-old white Duke University student and part-time secretary in the Washington office of Senator Clair Engle of California, Joan Trumpauer arrived in Jackson, MS by train from New Orleans, LA as part of the June 4, 1961 Mississippi Freedom Ride.

 

 The group was promptly ushered by Jackson police to a waiting paddy wagon; all nine Riders refused bail. Trumpauer was transferred to Parchman State Prison Farm.

 

 In her interview for Freedom Riders, she recalls the harrowing conditions at Parchman, which included forced vaginal examinations used as a tactic to humiliate and terrorize female prisoners (Meet 6-7).

 

Out of her experience as a Freedom Rider, it is the memory of the rabbi who faithfully visited the jail that still moves her today. Joan Trumpauer Mulholland of Arlington, Va., joined the rides just in time for the fill-the-jails strategy in Mississippi. Volunteers from across the country began arriving in the South in waves and getting arrested, thus burdening the criminal justice system and bringing more focus to their cause. More than 300 riders were jailed that summer. Mulholland spent three months in jail, much of it at Mississippi’s Parchman Prison.

 

“We were down, we calculated, to less than three square feet of floor space for the prisoners in the white women’s cells,” she said. “That’s pretty crowded; that means you have to sleep underneath the bunks and things.”

 

Perry Nussbaum, a rabbi in the Jackson area, drove in weekly, like clockwork, to visit the riders, said Mulholland. This was no small gesture during that time and place, she says, pointing out that his routine made him an easy target for the Ku Klux Klan members who probably were watching.

 

Nussbaum would ask riders to call out their jail cell numbers if they wanted him to pray with them, and Mulholland always took him up on the offer. “He would start praying in Hebrew and get a nice cadence going, and sort of lull the guards, and then he would slip in little tidbits of news, like what was happening in the world, and baseball scores and stuff. And then he’d slip back to Hebrew,” she said. He would also write to their parents letting them know how the riders were faring.

 

She also recalls an underground network of church women in Jackson who secretly collected money to help the imprisoned riders purchase necessities such as shower shoes and toiletries.

 

A few years later, there was the moment of kindness from a hairdresser in Jackson who walked Mulholland and other women over to her salon to give them a shampoo after patrons had covered the demonstrators with condiments and spray paint during a Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in in 1963.

 

“There were always people who were supporting you,” she said, “people to drive you down to the demonstrations and take you back . . . as crucial as those out there demonstrating, and usually more numerous.”

 

A retired teaching assistant for Arlington Public Schools, Mulholland hopes the new monument will remind Americans of the power in organizing for change (Colvin 11-15).

 

Notable riders who did time at Parchman included James Farmer, John Lewis, Catherine Burks, Bernard Lafayette Jr., Frederick Leonard, Henry “Hank” Thomas, James Bevel, David Dennis, David Paul, James Lawson, Doris Jean Castle, and John Moody.   

 

Though the Freedom Rides dramatically demonstrated that some Southern states were ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court’s mandate to desegregate bus terminals, it would take a petition from U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy to spur the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue tough new regulations, backed by fines up to $500, that would eventually end segregated bus facilities. Even after the order went into effect, on November 1, 1961, hard-core segregation persisted; still, the “white” and “colored” signs in bus stations across the South began to come down. The New York Times, which had earlier criticized the Freedom Riders’ “incitement and provocation,” acknowledged that they “started the chain of events which resulted in the new I.C.C. order” (Holmes 6).

 

The Freedom Rides illuminated the courage of black and white youth and highlighted the leadership of Diane Nash.  The Freedom Rides also inspired rural southern blacks to embrace civil disobedience as a strategy for regaining their civil rights.  That inspiration would be seen in subsequent campaigns such as Mississippi’s Freedom Summer in 1964 and the Selma Movement in 1965 as well as in dozens of much less heralded efforts to register to vote or to integrate the region’s public schools (Mack 4).

 

Segregation was unfair. It was wrong, morally, religiously. As a Southerner – a

white Southerner – I felt that we should do what we could to make the South

better and to rid ourselves of this evil” (Freedom 2).

~ Joan Mulholland, Activist

  

 

Works cited:

 

Colvin, Rhonda.  “As Trump attacks John Lewis, here’s how freedom riders broke the chains of segregation.”  The Washington Post.  January 15, 2017.  Web.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/we-were-soldiers-the-flesh-and-blood-behind-the-new-civil-rights-monument/2017/01/15/4d1c9edc-42dc-11e6-88d0-6adee48be8bc_story.html?utm_term=.3a43ab1ea4f6

 

Cozzens, Lisa.   “Freedom Rides.”  Watson.org. Web.   http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/freeride.html

 

“Freedom Rides Quotes.”  Uen.org. Web.  https://www.uen.org/freedomrides/downloads/Freedom_Rides_Quotes.pdf

 

Holmes, Marian Smith.  “The Freedom Riders, Then and Now.”  Smithsonian Magazine.  February 2009.  Web.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/

 

Mack, Dwayne.  “Freedom Rides (1961).”  BlackPast.org.  Web.  https://blackpast.org/aah/freedom-rides-1961

 

“Meet the Players: Freedom Riders.”  American Experience.  Web.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/meet-players-freedom-riders/

 

Nittle, Nadra Kareem.  “How the Freedom Riders Movement Began.”  ThoughtCo.  March 18, 2017.  Web.  https://www.thoughtco.com/the-freedom-riders-movement-2834894

 

Simkin, John.  “Freedom Riders.”  Spartacus Educational.  August 2014.  Web.  https://spartacus-educational.com/USAfreedomR.htm