29 December 2008
The Albany Movement
Protestors meet a canny opponent
This article is excerpted from the book Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 3.6 MB).
Two major civil rights campaigns during 1962 and 1963 would illustrate both the limits and the possibilities of nonviolent resistance. African Americans in the segregated city of Albany, Georgia, had traditionally engaged in as much political activism as was possible in the Jim Crow South. In 1961, SNCC volunteers arrived to beef up an ongoing voter registration effort. They established a voter-registration center that served as a home base for a campaign of sit-ins, boycotts, and other protests. In November 1961, a number of local black organizations formed the Albany Movement, under the leadership of William G. Anderson, a young osteopath. The protests accelerated, and by mid-December more than 500 demonstrators had been jailed. Anderson had met both Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleague, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, pastor at Montgomery’s First Baptist Church and King’s chief lieutenant at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He decided to invite King’s help, both to maintain the Albany Movement’s momentum and to secure national publicity for its cause.
Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett proved a formidable opponent for King and the other activists. Pritchett realized that news media coverage of segregationist violence against dignified, nonviolent civil rights activists already had turned many Americans against Jim Crow. Pritchett worked assiduously to deprive the Albany Movement of a similar “media moment.” Albany police officers were warned against employing any kind of violence against protestors, especially if the press was nearby. While earlier protestors had successfully “filled the jails,” Pritchett scattered them in jails throughout the surrounding counties. “In the end,” the New Georgia Encyclopedia concluded, “King ran out of willing marchers before Pritchett ran out of jail space.”
Pritchett also understood that King was the media star and that national press coverage would ebb if there was no King “angle” to pursue. King returned several times to Albany, and several times was arrested and convicted for breach of the peace. When the court offered King and Abernathy their choice of jail time or a fine, they chose jail, the option certain to attract press coverage. But they found that an “anonymous benefactor” — a segregationist recruited by Pritchett — had paid their fine.
When the media moment finally came, it was not the one King had hoped for. By July 24, 1962, many of Albany’s African Americans had grown frustrated at the lack of progress. That evening, a crowd of 2,000 blacks armed with bricks, bottles, and rocks attacked a group of Albany policemen and Georgia highway patrolmen. One trooper lost two teeth. But Laurie Pritchett’s well-schooled officers did not retaliate, and the chief was quick to seize the initiative: “Did you see them nonviolent rocks?” he asked.
King moved swiftly to limit the damage. He cancelled a planned mass demonstration and declared a day of penance. But a federal injunction against further demonstrations in Albany added to the difficulties: Up till then, the civil rights cause had had the law on its side. Further action in Albany would allow segregationists to portray King and his followers as lawbreakers.
King understood that his presence in Albany would no longer help the wider movement. SNCC, NAACP, CORE, and other local activists continued the fight in Albany and would eventually secure real gains for the city’s African Americans. For King and his SCLC team, Albany was a learning experience. As King explained in his autobiography:
When we planned our strategy for Birmingham months later, we spent many hours assessing Albany and trying to learn from its errors. Our appraisals not only helped to make our subsequent tactics more effective, but revealed that Albany was far from an unqualified failure.
