The Southwest Georgia Civil Rights Movement: The Historical Impact and the Celebration of its 50th Anniversary

The Southwest Georgia Civil Rights Movement:

The Historical Impact and the Celebration of its

50th Anniversary

 

Daaiyah N. Salaam / Southwest Georgia Project

 

Freedom Riders, the Congress of Racial Equality

(CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Committee (SNCC) were some of the prominent

organizations in Albany, Georgia, in I961.These groups came

for a common goal, to ensure that the Interstate Commerce

Commission ruling to desegregate interstate bus and train

terminals was upheld. However, these groups did not

come to start a movement; they came to join a movement

already taking place in Southwest Georgia. Beginning in

I955, African American citizens of Albany had grown tired

of the mistreatment and inequities, and they spelled out

their grievances on such things as voting poll taxes and

school segregation in letters to the City Council. Mass

meetings were already taking place within the churches and

meetings were being held with the City's leaders demanding

change within the political and socio-economic structure in

Southwest Georgia.

 

In the Fall of I962, Dr. William Anderson, the only

African American doctor in the city and later known as the

Albany Civil Rights Movement Leader, asked his former

Morehouse College classmate, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

to provide a short sermon to the people in Albany in support

of the Albany Movement. In turn, the singing, the passion,

and the courage of the Albany people invigorated Dr. King.

 

Marches, sit-ins, and mass meetings were held all over

Southwest Georgia, and all were lead by song. The Albany

Movement became known as the "Singing Movement"

and the SNCC Freedom Singers emerged from the events.

The power of the song captivated and carried the people

through the toughest hours. Students, professors, and

doctors risked their own well-being in order to provide

a better way of living. Students who were expelled from

Albany State included Annette White, who had her Miss

ASU Homecoming crown taken for participating in the

movement; Dr. Bernice Johnson [Reagon], who later

founded the renowned group Sweet Honey in the Rock;

Ola Mae Quartimon, who was sentenced to 33 years in

the Milledgeville mental institution, and; Charles Sherrod,

a SNCC member and founder of the Southwest Georgia

Project for Community Education.

 

The constant external pressures, as well as conflicting

tactics from the different organizations within the

movement, prohibited it from being completely cohesive.

Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

returned to Albany over the next several years and lessons

learned from there helped to focus efforts in the national

civil rights movement.

 

The concerted efforts within the Southwest Georgia

region continued beyond Dr. King and the SCLC's

involvement. School desegregation was enforced; voter

registration drives continued to increase the African

American vote in the area; and African American leaders

began to run for elected offices.

 

Andrew Young wrote: "I admired their achievement.

No matter what the press said about Albany, I knew how

difficult and dangerous it was to be organizing for civil rights

in southwest Georgia. Bymobilizing black people in Albany

!' to express their discontent, the students had accomplished a

great deal:' (I)

 

On June 2-4, 20II, the Southwest Georgia Project will

celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the events surrounding the

Southwest Georgia Civil Rights Movement. This celebration

will bring civil rights activists, professors, authors, and

contributors to reflect on the events of the past, the current

reality, and where we are headed in the future .

 

For more information contact the Southwest Georgia

Project at 229.430.9870, email: salaam.d@swgaproject.com

'Andrew Young, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the

Transformation of America (New York: HarperCollins Publishers,

1996),172.