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Albany Movement Notes

John Ricks, Martin Luther King’s Mistakes in Albany, Georgia 1961 – 62

Ricks puts the blame for the failure of the movement on King: the lack of planning and how he
killed enthusiasm (not taking advice from black leaders).

Before King took the SCLC into Albany, there was no planning, no study of the situation to see if it
was a suitable place to get involved. Had it been investigated, it would have found a black
community, divided between the NAACP, SNCC and the Albany Movement.

An assessment into the white community would have shown that Albany was not a typical Southern
city. Members of the city commission were college educated, and its police chief had college
training.

As black leaders wrangled over money and publicity, white leaders of the community seemed to
gain confidence and unite behind Pritchett. He realised that demonstrators hoped to dramatize the
evils of segregation by provoking violence against them. Pritchett schooled his policemen in non-
violent tactics. Prevention of violence kept Kennedy’s Administration from having to intervene, and
failed to appeal to federal pressure and therefore no effective response was brought.

SNCC leaders and the Albany Movement wanted him to get arrested again. However, citing the
need to make speeches in order to raise money for campaigning, King refused. Pritchett secured an
injunction against King marching. SNCC and Albany Movement begged him to defy the ban – King
refused. Coretta King expressed regret for this action – it deflated some enthusiasm.

1962, King and his associates did a study of Albany. They concluded that they all went with
misplaced faith. They were convinced that the Kennedy Administration would intervene.

King explained that the leadership in Albany had tried to launch simultaneous campaigns against all
segregation there. What they should have done was settle one goal and achieve that first.

Filling up jails on the outset was an error that killed enthusiasm too. People who were arrested once
were hesitant to get arrested again, especially after the difficulty of getting released the first time.

Black strength would have been better brought against the economic leaders of Albany through
selective and sustained boycotts, instead of pressure of political leadership.

Without the lessons at Albany, Birmingham’s victory would not have been possible.

Leonard Gilberg, Letter from Albany Merchant Leonard Gilberg to Albany Police Chief Laurie
Pritchett

90 – 95% of all the Negro business I have enjoyed in past years has been lacking for the last 7
months due to an obvious boycott on the part of the Negroes.

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Albany Movement Notes

Our business is at present suffering a 50% decrease due to the lack of customer traffic in Albany
and its intolerable situation.

Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s

Carson does not think the movement was an entire failure: it served as a training ground for
future movements – SNCC mobilised a large number of people for the first time & the important
of freedom songs were realised.

King suddenly announced that he was allowing himself to be released on bail as part of a settlement
that included compliance with Interstate Commerce Commission ruling and the release of other
demonstrators.

President Kennedy urged Albany officials to negotiate a settlement. Kennedy voted that the US
government were “involved in sitting down at Geneva with the Soviet Union. I can’t understand
why the government of Albany, City Council of Albany cannot do the same for American citizens”.

August: King, Anderson and Abernathy were convicted of disturbing the peace and parading
without a permit. By this time, the enthusiasm of Albany blacks had been weakened by the months
of fruitless appeals to the conscience of Albany’s white residents.

SNCC worker, Bill Hausen: “we were naïve to think that we could fillip the jails, before Pritchett
ran out of jails”.

It did serve as a training ground for SNCC workers who learned new techniques for sustaining mass
militancy for long periods and served as a model for blacks in other southern cities where mass
struggles would soon emerge.

Howard Zinn: movement was not a “perfectly coordinated tactical efficiency.

They became aware of the cultural dimension for the black struggle. SNCC workers became aware
of the value of freedom songs. Freedom songs became a major way of making people who were not
on the scene feel the intensity of what was happening in the South.

For the first time, the SNCC had mobilized large numbers of black adults for sustained struggle.
They had demonstrated that protest efforts to win the confidence of local residents and calculated
acts of civil disobedience could unleash dormant feelings of racial militancy.

Howard Raines, My Soul is Rested: The Struggle of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep
South

Raines thinks the failure of the Albany campaign was due to Pritchett’s study of King.

Pritchett became known as the man who beat Martin Luther King at his own game simply because,
before King arrived to lead demonstrations, he did the obvious thing.

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Albany Movement Notes

I researched King. I read about his early days in Montgomery, his methods there. We planned mass
arrests. We had known their plan was… overcrowd out jail conditions, thus making us have to give
in. I had studied this philosophy of his methods and made preparations that at no time would any be
housed our facilities in Albany or Dougherty County.

I had made arrangements – Lee County which was 10 miles, and then we’d go out 25 miles, go out
50 miles, 100 miles – all these places had agreed to take the prisoners.

This did away with King’s method of over-extending the facilities.

Following the Gandhian tactic, he vowed to stay in jail instead of accept his bond, when his bail
was made annoymously. It appeared he went back on his word, and his made him loose a lot of
respect from the blacks. They said: “look, this man said he’d stay forever and he ups and leaves”.

SNCC accused King of betraying the Albany blacks who had marched to jail with him.

Stephen G. N. Tuck, Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940 – 1980

Tuck believes the lack of preparation led to tactical mistakes – the white community were more
united than the black community.

Movement failed to wring any concessions from the city government and was widely recognised as
a major setback for national civil rights movement.

David Chappell: “here they lost a big one to the segregationists”.

Slater King estimated that 20% of all the maids and cooks lost their jobs permanently because of the
animosity raised by the protestors.

Failure of Albany seemed more acute because of the hubris of expectation. This expectation was
faded by the rapid escalation of local participation. Albany’s mass meetings were later remembered
for their intensity and fervour.

A selective boycott of the downtown stores proved ineffectual because Albany’s black population
launched lacked sufficient buying power.

King sought to re-launch a massive campaign, promising to establish an SCLC office in the city.
But the movement lost even more momentum when King accepted a federal court injunction
prohibiting demonstrations.

In a final attempt to gain the initiative over protests, King toured the black streets of Albany and
proclaimed a day of penance. King sought to restore momentum by being arrested once more on 27
July and refusing bail. Only 15 people volunteered to go to jail with him.

City Commission said it will only meet with law abiding Negroes. Richard Morely noted that “it
was clear that he whites used King’s presence as an excuse not to meet with local leaders”.
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Albany Movement Notes

Andrew Young, one of King’s colleagues concluded the momentum failed because it was
unplanned, the SCLC were unprepared.

King himself said, “I think it would have been better to concentrate on one area”.

Local factions too hampered the success. Sherwood and Reagon had ousted a NAACP leader by
calling a meeting in 1961 without his knowledge. They had also ousted the NAACP’s youth
affiliate by setting up a rival group.

The presence of the SCLC, Walker in particular, who tried to assume day to day control made
divisions worse.

Marion Page (executive secretary of Albany Movement) allegedly shared ideas with Pritchett on
ways to make King leave the protest. Ricks claims that King seems to be an unfortunate decision
that delayed desegregation in the city.

In a bid to coordinate opposition to the movement, the City Commission granted Pritchett powers to
act on behalf of the white community.

Pritchett outmanoeuvred the local campaign. By exercising restraint in public against the protestors
and arranging for the release of King from jail, he denied the protest the type of outrage needed to
attract public sympathy.

John Lewis: “Pritchett was a cunning man and deceitful”.

Pritchett at times, did indulge in brutal tactics, but away from the attention of the national reporters,
by incarcerating people in squalid conditions.

Clayborne Carson, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Negroes challenged discrimination in public places, denial of voting rights, school segregation, and
the deprivation of free speech and assembly. The Albany Movement used all the methods of
nonviolence: direct action expressed through mass demonstrations; jail-ins; sit-ins; wade-ins, and
kneel-ins; political action; boycotts and legal actions.

SCLC gave full moral and financial support to the Albany Movement.

I was jailed on charges of parading without a permit, disturbing the peace, and obstructing the
sidewalk. I refused to pay the fine and had expected to spend Christmas in jail. I hoped thousands
would join me. My personal reason for being in Albany was to express personal witness of a
situation I felt was very important to me.

Women over seventy, teenagers and middle aged adults – some with professional degrees in
medicine, law and education, some simple housekeepers and labourers – crowding the jails.
Indication that the Negro would not rest until all the barriers of segregation were broken down.
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Albany Movement Notes

Merchants were urging a settlement upon the city officials and an agreement was finally wrung
form the unwilling hands. That agreement dishonoured and violated by the city. Led to a
resumption of the nonviolent moment, and when cases against the seven hundred odd prisoners
were not dropped and when the city council refused to negotiate to end discrimination in public
places, actions began again.

July 24, officials unleashed force against our peaceful demonstration, brutally beating a pregnant
woman and canning one of our lawyers. Some of the Negro onlookers, hurled bottles and stones at
police. I temporality halted mass demonstrations, and for several days, I visited homes, clubs, pool
rooms, urging that no retaliation be tolerated, and even the angriest of men acceded.

In order to demonstrate our commitment to nonviolence and our determination to keep our protest
peaceful, we declare a Day of Penance beginning at 12 noon today.

Lawyers King and Donald K. Hollowell of Atlanta came to see me before the hearing started. We
discussed how the Albany battle must be waged on all four fronts. A legal battle in courts; with
demonstrations and kneel-ins and sit-ins; with an economic boycott; and, finally, with an intense
voter registration campaign.

August 7, State witnesses were saying that they were trying to prevent violence and protect the
people, I told Ralph it was very depressing to see city officials make a farce of the court.

August 10, Ralph and I agreed to call of the marches and return to our churches in Atlanta to give
the Commission a chance to “save face” and demonstrate good faith with the Albany Movement.

I thought the federal government could do more, because basic constitutional rights were being
denied. The persons who were protesting in Albany, were seeking to exercise constitutional rights
through peaceful protest, nonviolent protest. I thought it would be a very good thing for the federal
government to take a definite stand on that issue.

5% of the Negro population went to jail. 95% of the Negro population boycotted buses, shops
where humiliation, not service, were offered. Boycotts were successful. The buses were off the
streets and rusting in garages, and the line went out of business. Merchants watched the sales of
goods decline week by week. National concerns even changes plans to open branches in Albany
because the city was too unstable to encourage business to invest there.

The opposition had closed parks and libraries, but in the process, they closed them for a white
people as well.

Looking back at it, I’m sorry I was bailed out. I didn’t understand at the time what was happening.
We lost an initiative that we never regained. We attached the political power structure instead of the
economic power structure. You don’t win against a political power structure where you don’t have
the votes.

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Albany Movement Notes

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. It would have been better to have concentrated upon integrating the buses
or the lunch counters.

When we planned our strategy for Birmingham, we spent hours assessing and trying to learn from
the errors of Albany. It helped to make our subsequent tactics more effective, but Albany was far
from an unqualified failure. Thousands of Negroes were added to the voting registration rolls, that
ultimately led to the election of a moderate candidate who confronted segregation.

Recalling the Albany Arrests Forty Years Later, Ralph Lord Roy

At King’s trial, we were pleased to hear that we had quietly integrated the courtroom for the first
time in its history.

Dr King himself stated that “I failed to do what I had hoped to do”. Within a year the public library,
closed for twelve months because of integration attempts, reopened on an integrated basis. In the
fall of 1963, the first black students entered Albany High School. And soon the city commission
had removed all segregation statutes from its books.

Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the
1980s

Charles Sherwood: “interstate travel became desegregated. Actually, some of us really didn’t think
they would get arrests because this was a federal mandate. I mean, we had constitutional rights.
They mess with us now, they’re going to mess with the federal government. We thought nobody
was going to mess with the federal government.”

Laurie Pritchett: “they were not arrested on a federal charge. They were arrested on a city ordinance
of failing to obey the orders of a law enforcement officer”.

William G. Anderson: “the purpose of the organisation was to seek a means of desegregating the
city. Albany Movement had decided that mass demonstrations would be the best way to respond.”

Charles Sherrod: “we were going to break the system down from within. Out ability to suffer was
somehow going to overcome their ability to hurt us”.

Wyatt Tee Walker: “SCLC were like fire-fighters, the SNCC was in over its head. They wanted
international and national attention. King’s presence would generate, but did not want to input of
his organisation, nor his strategy.

Laurie Pritchett: “King told me – this is one time, not only did you out-nonviolent me, buy you
outsmarted me. It was a shrewd move, but it accomplished what we wanted”.

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Albany Movement Notes

William G. Anderson: “the movement was a qualified success – it changed attitudes of people –
people were more determined not to accept a segregated society; kids who saw their parents were
determined they should not go through what their parents had. The mistakes made at Albany were
not repeated.

Joseph E. Luders, Civil Rights Success and the Politics of Racial Violence

After months of protest at numerous venues and several hundred arrests, civil rights activists –
notability, King – departed without desegregating any public facility. Without the provocative
clashes between police and demonstrators, supportive federal intervention was simply unnecessary.

Pritchett was less hot-tempered than Bull Connor in Birmingham and other Deep South law
officers.

David Chappell, Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement

Chappell argues that Pritchett and Albany’s white citizens proved to the decisive force that led to
the movement being unsuccessful.

The outcome in Albany derived directly from the unique strategy of the white people who
supported the status quo.

Laurie Pritchett as a politician, he tended to follow the model of Odysseus rather than Achilles,
outwitting his opponents rather than challenging them and burgeoning them into submission.

He claimed to have set up the capacity to confine 10,000 prisoners.

Pritchett knew King’s success dependent on their ability to get the segregationists to attack non-
violent demonstrators – never happened.

Pritchett understood the need to make ends and means cohere in political strategy to win the hearts
and mind of the public. Even if the public agrees with the reasons for which its political leaders
after fighting, they may be repulsed by the way they fight. He disciplined his ranks so well that the
never exposed the public to segregationist brutality.

July 1962, Shiloh Baptist Church – Pritchett was respected by the black community. Slater King
was frustrated by this, thought showing respect was a step backward.

SNCC’s new executive secretary, who claimed to have opposed King’s presence in Albany, and
later referred to himself as a black revolutionary were angered by King blaming the violence in on
the black community.

James Bevel, SCLC field secretary: “in the movement, you generally just set up a situation and wait
for your adversary to make a mistake. But these are very shrewd people”.

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Albany Movement Notes

Rumours had got around that sheriff Zeke Matthews had beaten Sherrod. Pritchett and Sherrod
came to an agreement – movement associates moved to the same jail. At a mass meeting in Shiloh,
Sherrod denied being badly beaten. Pritchett managed to turn the abuse of Sherrod back to his own
advantage.

Slater King was assaulted too. Pritchett said his refusal at food had angered a jailed, who responded
by pushing him backwards.

Pritchett reprimanded the perpetrators of violence, dissociated himself from the act, offered
symbolic penance, lectured his followers on the dangers of such indulgences and reclaimed the
moral high ground.

William Anderson: “Albany was successful, only if the goal was going to jail”.

Pritchett achieved the movements only victory, he gave credit to the movement by imitating it. He
showed that an effective defence of segregation was the abandonment of racist ideology on which
segregation was based.

John Kirk, Martin Luther King Jr: Profiles in Power

Conflicts of interest and bickering between the SCLC, SNCC, NAACP and local leaders
undermined black unity.

Pritchett hoped to contain the movement and to deny it any publicity. Also, anticipating the use of
‘jail not bail tactics’, Pritchett made contingency plans t use jails of surrounding counties if
Albany’s jails became overcrowded. He correctly bargained on the movement running out of
demonstrators before he ran out of jails.

Sherrod and Reagon, joined by fellow SNCC worker, Charles Jones, continued their organising
efforts at Albany State College in preparation for further demonstrations. This placed the SNCC
further at odds with local NAACP branch members who felt the SNCC was poaching its own
NAACP Youth Council recruits.

The friction between SNCC and the NAACP led to the intervention of Albany’s Criterion Club, a
community organisation of black professionals and businessmen. They formed the Albany
Movement – and decided to tackle racial discrimination on a number of fronts.

Local NAACP president, E. D. Hamilton, refused to sign up to the Albany Movement without first
gaining the consent of state and regional NAACP representatives. When Hamilton consulted with
NAACP state secretary, Vernon Jordan and NAACP regional director Ruby Hurley, they both
insisted that the local NAACP branch should take charge of any new demonstrations.

The NAACP even approached Dr Anderson with an assurance that he would be installed as local
NAACP branch president if the Albany Movement disbanded and agreed to work under the
NAACP’s banner.

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Albany Movement Notes

SNCC workers were unhappy with the decision to enlist outside help and saw ‘no necessity for
King to come’. They believed the local protest efforts were working sufficiently well already and
that the self-confidence of local blacks was beginning to build. They were afraid that inviting King
might introduce a ‘Messiah complex’ into the movement.

King’s arrival polarised opinion in Albany. Whites refused to make concessions while pressured by
his presence in the city, whereas the local black community was even more emboldened because of
it.

With King in jail and Abernathy back in Atlanta, SCLC executive director, Wyatt Walker took over
operations in Albany. Walker’s actions antagonised other organisations and leaders. In Atlanta,
Abernathy appeared on television urging civil rights activists to go to Albany and to support the
struggle there. In Albany, Marion Page, insisted that he was the one in charge of the movement.

SNCC’s Charles Jones held his own press conference, telling reporters that he personally intended
to renew negotiations with the city’s white leaders.

SCLC attorney, Donald Hollowell joined the Albany Movement’s Marion Page and C. B. King in
negotiations with Mayor Kelley and Pritchett. In exchange for a cessation of demonstrations and the
departure of King from Albany, the city’s bus and train terminals would be desegregated, the city
would establish an eight-member biracial committee, and all local citizens would be released from
jail.

Albany Movement told reporters that all demonstrators would be released, that the city’s bus and
train terminals would be desegregated, and that there would be further biracial discussions with the
City Commission when it met in January 1963.

Kelley and Pritchett told reporters that blacks were being release from jail only because they had
agreed to provide the bail money. They insisted that both bus and train terminals in Albany already
obeyed the ICC desegregation ruling, although they refused to say whether that meant blacks would
actually be free to use them without arrest.

Many reporters focussed upon and congratulated Pritchett’s policing methods and his strategy of
neutralising nonviolence by making mass arrests instead of using force.

The most important thing for the white community to do was to keep a united front, Pritchett
insisted.

Pressure was mounting in Albany’s white business community for the City Commission to be more
receptive of black demands. A boycott of white businesses remained in effect and war hurting many
downtown merchants.

Since it relied heavily upon black patronage, by the end of January, the bus company faced
collapse. The Albany Movement agreed to call off the bus boycott and to save the bus company on
condition that the bus desegregated, that the bus company accepted black job applicants.

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Albany Movement Notes

City commissionaires still refused to give in to any black demands. The bus company therefore
went out of business.

With no city buses left to boycott, the Albany Movement stepped up its downtown economic
boycott to a larger number of stores.

King’s decision, in refusing to lead further demonstrations had a dire impact on local blacks, who
SCLC programme director, Andrew Young, reported were ‘outraged because Dr. King would not
lead then in mass demonstrations… the talk through the Negro community was that King was going
chicken.

Between Pritchett’s successful policing tactics, the steadfast refusal of the City Commission to
negotiate, the waning support of the black community, and the absence of federal intervention, the
local movement in Albany appeared to be grounding to a halt.

Adam Fairclough, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Quest for Nonviolent Social Change

King became more hard-headed and politically astute as a result of age and experience.

On the one hand, King exerted pressure on local whites, through demonstrations, sit-ins and
economic boycotts, to negotiate over the demands of blacks. On the other hand, by creating a
serious local crisis and generating public concern, he tried to induce the federal government to
intervene in some way. He failed on both counts. But, he failed for tactical reasons: inadequate
planning and poor choice of target. SCLC had to be more careful in its choice of target.

Jail often meant economic disaster, and individuals would have to think twice before volunteering
for arrest. Only 5% of people could be persuaded to go to jail.

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