Albany Movement left its fingerprints all over March on Washington

Clennon King

ALBANY -- News of this year’s 60th anniversary of the March on Washington will doubtlessly reduce itself to four words and one man: MLK and "I have a dream." What many don’t realize is the Albany Movement and the activism it spawned marked that day in so many ways.

One only need look at the speech of the 23-year-old newly elected president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis. His words had the Kennedys on edge, and with good reason. He all-but-charged the New Englanders of cozying up to local segregationists to protect their shot at a second term.

One by one, Lewis isolated for the masses missteps made by the Kennedy White House and Justice Department in Albany the summer before.

This Alabama-born sharecroppers’ son referenced the July 28, 1962 attack by Dougherty County Sheriff D.C. "Cull" Campbell, who split open the scalp of civil rights attorney C.B. King with his walking cane. He was the same lawman who boasted afterwards to the press, “I'm a white man and he's a n-----. Yeah, I knocked the hell out of him, and I'd do it again."

“What did the federal government do," Lewis thundered, “when (the) sheriff beat Attorney C.B. King and left him half-dead?”

Lewis also pointed to another attack five days before in Mitchell County, where Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett jailed movement demonstrators. That’s when two Camilla police officers assaulted Marion King, the pregnant wife of a movement leader and mother, causing her to lose consciousness and eventually her child.

“What did the federal government do when ... police ... kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?” Lewis demanded.

Lewis then led a march audience 39 miles north to nearby Sumter County, where police beat voter registration activists before filing insurrection charges against organizers Don Harris, Ralph Allen and John Perdew.

"What about the three young men, SNCC field secretaries in Americus, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest?" Lewis shouted into the microphone.

Lewis eventually took dead aim at Bobby Kennedy, who had asked a federal jury to indict and convict nine leaders of the Albany Movement, including Slater King, Robert Thomas, Eliza "Goldie" Jackson, the Rev. Samuel Wells, Luther Woodall, Robert Colbert, Dr. William G. Anderson, Joni Rabinowitz and Thomas Chatmon Sr.

"Do you know that in Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted, not by the Dixiecrats, but by the federal government for peaceful protest?" Lewis asked.

Even after the future U.S. Representative stepped down from the podium, one more speaker notably drew from activism and influence of the Albany Movement to bring home his own point.

Less than a year before the March, King traveled to Lee and Terrell counties, where Klansmen had burned three black churches to the ground in a single night. During a vigil the following day, King heard a moving prayer delivered by SNCC worker Prathia Hall, a Philadelphia preacher’s daughter doing voter registration work in Sasser. Impressed, he pulled her aside afterwards, seeking permission to borrow a turn-of-phrase that resonated. It was "I have a dream."

For all the reason above, I see great value in black folks studying their own history, through their own lens, for their own sake, independent of anyone else. Our history is, after all, the armor designed to protect ourselves and our children and our community. Without relying on anyone else, we got this. So, let’s get to work.

Clennon L. King is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and historian who makes his home in Albany. He is the youngest son of civil rights attorney C.B. King and the nephew of Slater and Marion King.

Originally published on albanyherald.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.

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