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/journey_4/p_4.html

 

“The Albany Movement campaigns for full integration in Georgia (Fall 1961- Summer 1962).”  Global Nonviolent Acyion Database.  Web.  https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/albany-movement-campaigns-full-integration-georgia-fall-1961-summer-1962

 

“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

King, Pamela Sterne.  “From Albany to Birmingham.”  Weld: Birmingham’s Newspaper.  December 19, 2012.  Web.  https://weldbham.com/blog/2012/12/19/from-albany-to-birmingham/

 

“Mt. Zion Baptist Church.”  We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement.  Nps.gov.  Web.  https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/g3.htm

 

Muscato, Christopher.  “The Albany Movement: History, Events & Significance.”  Study.com.  Web.  https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-albany-movement-history-events-significance.html

 

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

 

“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-on-freedom-an-interview-with-civil-rights-activist-and-freedom-singer-rutha-harris/

 

Sustar, Lee.  “King, nonviolence and the Albany Movement.”  SocialistWorker.org.  November 9, 2012.  Web.  https://socialistworker.org/2012/11/09/king-and-nonviolence