DESTINATION: Albany Civil Rights Institute keeps the memory of equal right’s struggle alive

Albany, Georgia, the ‘Good Life’ city, was anything but, in 1961, with its racial segregation practices - the Jim Crow laws - being exercised in Southwest Georgia.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was drawn into the confrontation here, in mid-December, when the community’s black students contested the refusal of government leaders to grant them admittance to the ‘whites-only’ waiting room at the bus station - despite the Interstate Commerce Commission’s ruling that guaranteed that “no bus facility, bus, or driver could deny access to its facilities based on race.”

Eventually, Reverend King was detained and incarcerated in mass arrests carried out by Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett.

Knowing that Dr. King had modeled his pacifistic activist techniques after the humanitarian, Mohandas Gandhi, Pritchett countered with his own ‘peaceable resistance’.

England might have been overwhelmed on India’s Subcontinent without sufficient resources to sequester all of Gandhi's demonstrators…however, Pritchett vowed there wouldn’t be a repeat of that situation in his city. Pritchett pre-arranged for jails across southwestern Georgia to prevent his own city’s lockup from filling up.

Before all was said and done, over 700 dissidents were rotting behind bars in appalling conditions in rural counties.

This caused Reverend King’s ‘jail not bail’ strategy to not pan out.

According to Lee Formwalt, Executive Director of the Albany Civil Rights Institute, “King ran out of non-violent protesters before [the Chief] ran out of jail cells.”

Reverend King’s own internment was cut short, when Pritchett, on the sly, arranged for King’s friend, evangelist Billy Graham, to pay his fine, so he could rightfully release him.

From his autobiography, Reverend King stated: "We had witnessed persons…kicked off lunch counter stools during the sit-ins, ejected from churches during the kneel-ins, and thrown into [prison] during the Freedom Rides. But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."

Though King left Albany feeling defeated, he learned valuable lessons for later campaigns in Birmingham and Selma.

During these racially-tense times, the struggle for individual freedoms for black citizenry found ‘a voice’ in Albany.

That voice started with Cordell Hull Reagon, a 16-year-old Nashville high-schooler who had joined a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee rally in his hometown because ‘it looked exciting’.

That decision to march would shape his adulthood into a life-long commitment to the civil rights cause.

The Albany Civil Rights Institute offers a close-up examination of the struggles that the African-American community endured and the rights that they fought for in the 1950s and 1960s.

With an accomplished tenor, in 1962, he founded ‘The Freedom Singers’, a two-man, two-woman quartet who belted out rousing gospel ‘freedom songs’ to stir up support, and raise money for their underfunded crusade.

The landmark signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by then-President Lyndon Johnson, was largely a consequence of tireless efforts of Albany/Dougherty’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People member and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizer, Charles Sherrod, plus Cordell Reagon, and grassroots leaders throughout southwest Georgia.

The bill outlawed literacy tests, poll taxes…any practices preventing African-Americans from casting their ballot in elections.

Affected by the new law were half the Dixie states, plus Alaska, Arizona, Idaho and Hawaii, where Native American populations had been denied suffrage.

These chronicles are presented through state-of-the-art multi-media displays, at the Albany Civil Rights Institute, a museum and resource library dedicated to preserving a written, oral, and visual history of the civil liberties skirmish in this nook of the south.

In a mock early-60’s living room, old newscasts depict the realities of daily existence for African-Americans in southwest Georgia.

Alongside the Institute resides the Old Mount Zion Baptist Church, the first mass-meeting site for Albany’s civil rights offensive.

Every second Saturday of the month, Rutha Mae Harris leads her fellow ‘Freedom Singers’ in a concert, free with a paid admission to the museum.

A mere 21-year-old when she joined the ensemble, Harris recalls how ‘the songs gave us hope…helped us overcome our fears.’

Today’s recitals recreate their campaign for God-given freedoms with stirring vocals; the dramatic lyrics about integration and violence, accompanied by cast members toting signs of dissent, are held just steps from the same pulpit where Reverend King preached.

“Our younger generation needs to have an appreciation of [Albany’s Black heritage],” Board Chairman Kenneth Cutts emphasizes. “The opportunities they now have [resulted from] blood, sweat, and tears for those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement.”

Travelers following the familiar Atlanta-to-Montgomery itinerary can easily detour to Albany to examine its civil rights legacy.

Afterwards, visitors can cross the street to the Shiloh Baptist Church archival marker and imagine they were part of those initial meetings held before the marches.

They can trace the footprints etched into the sidewalk, pretending to be an objector, picketing the bus station and other segregated locales in town.

With an impressive narrative in the push for citizens’ inalienable rights, Albany plays a pivotal role in Black History Month.

Swing on by…it’s a lovely two-hour drive past pecan groves and roadside placards boasting ‘BOILED PEANUTS FOR SALE’.

For a stroll down memory lane, a memory fraught with civil disobedience, aggression and the turbulence of the ‘50’s/‘60’s to gain equality, while eliminating the stigma of ‘separateness’ and the sting of racial discrimination.

Albany Civil Rights Institute 326 Whitney Avenue, Albany, Georgia (229) 432-1698 $6/person PLEASE NOTE: the museum is currently closed for refurbishment.

Vickie Lillo - Gadsden County News Service

DESTINATION: Albany Civil Rights Institute keeps the memory of equal right’s struggle alive

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DESTINATION: Albany Civil Rights Institute keeps the memory of equal right’s struggle alive

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Gadsden County Times Legals – 2/3

From the Editor’s Desk: So…Where Ya From?

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