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..

 

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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/content/albany-movement-campaigns-full-integration-georgia-fall-1961-summer-1962

 

“Albany Movement.”  Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.  Web.  https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/albany-movement

 

“Interview:Re-evaluating the Albany Civil Rights Movement: Interview with Lee Formwalt.”  DailyHistory.org.  Web.  https://dailyhistory.org/Interview:Re-evaluating_the_Albany_Civil_Rights_Movement:_Interview_with_Lee_Formwalt

“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

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

 

“Recalling the History of the Albany Movement.”  WALB10News.  November 11, 2015.  Web.  http://www.walb.com/story/16047367/recalling-the-hisotry-of-the-albany-movement/

Trueman, C. N.  “Albany 1961.”  historylearningsite.co.uk.  The History Learning Site.  March 27, 2015.  Web.  https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-civil-rights-movement-in-america-1945-to-1968/albany-1961/