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