Eyes on the Prize

by Juan Williams

  The next afternoon, King and about 250 demonstrators were arrested at city hall. Ralph Abernathy and Dr. Anderson were among them. Chief of police Laurie Pritchett, sensing that any harm done to King would only fuel the anger of Albany’s blacks, posted several officers and a detective with a submachine gun to guard the minister. Rather than being sent straight to jail, King, Abernathy, and Anderson were held in Pritchett’s office until that night to ensure their safety. Pritchett’s cautious handling of King that day was only the first of many countertactics the police chief would employ.

  “I did research,” the chief said later. “I found his method was nonviolence … to fill the jails, same as Gandhi in India. And once they filled the jails, we’d have no capacity to arrest and then we’d have to give in to his demands. I sat down and took a map. How many jails was in a fifteen-mile radius, how many was in a thirty-mile radius? And I contacted those authorities. They assured us that we could use their [jails].”

  King vowed to stay in jail until the city agreed to desegregate. As the demonstrations continued, the Albany Movement watched Pritchett with the grudging admiration of a chicken farmer for a sly fox. The word for him, said the SCLC’s Wyatt Walker, was “slick.” Recalls Walker, “He did have enough intelligence to read Dr. King’s book [on the Montgomery bus boycott] and he culled from that a way to avoid confrontation … by being nonbrutal [in handling the protest].”

  King, Abernathy, and Dr. W. C. Anderson being arrested by Police Chief Laurie Pritchett.

  After refusing bond, King told reporters he wanted thousands to come to Albany and join him in jail. Meanwhile, Wyatt Walker pledged to devote the SCLC’s money and people to the cause. His offer rankled local black leaders. Marion Page, a retired postal worker and secretary of the Albany Movement, announced that “as of now we need no help.”

  Black journalist Louis Lomax quoted blacks in Albany as saying, “Dr. Walker can’t come to Albany and take over,” and “We can bake our own cake—all we need from the Atlanta boys is more flour and sugar.” The internecine conflicts among black activists surfaced again. SNCC workers were angry that Walker and King, whom they derisively called “De Lawd” for what they considered his “royal” treatment by the press, would try to take over the movement they had been developing for many weeks. Lomax quoted one student as saying, “Why didn’t Walker stay the hell in Atlanta, send us more money, let us have Martin to speak and walk with the marchers! If he had done that, we could have won. No. He had to come running into town … he’s just found a new world to conquer.”

  Walker, however, saw himself and the SCLC staff as “firefighters” who had come to the rescue of the inexperienced Albany activists. “I’ll try to say this as charitably as I can,” he said. “SNCC was in over its head. They wanted the international and national attention that Martin Luther King’s presence would generate. But they did not want the input of his organization.”

  Whites in Albany heard about the divisions among the black leadership. The Albany Herald’s segregationist publisher James Gray ran an editorial saying that blacks and whites in Albany would have solved their problems if King had “not come in from the outside.”

  Police Chief Pritchett held a press conference to announce that “outside agitation by people with criminal records is largely responsible for the trouble here.” He stressed that the Freedom Riders arrested in the terminal for violating the segregation laws had police records. He failed to mention that the arrests were for other nonviolent protests.

  Although King had spoken of the “strange illusion [among whites] that [local] Negroes don’t want to be free,” he was now in jail and could not counter this latest offensive from segregationist leaders. In his absence, the movement failed to develop further strategy. Dr. Anderson, the Albany Movement’s leader, had never before been directly involved in civil rights activism.

  Playing to local blacks’ desire to retain control of the movement, city officials offered a deal to Marion Page, the Albany Movement’s secretary, that would provide for the demonstrators’ release and for desegregation of the bus and train terminals. The authorities also said the local leaders could bring any further demands before a meeting of the city commissioners. In return, the Albany Movement had to promise to end its demonstrations. On December 18, Page, Anderson, and other Albany leaders agreed orally to the deal, and King, along with other protesters, was released from jail on property bonds offered by local residents. King, who had not been party to the negotiations, said he was leaving jail because he did “not want to stand in the way of peaceful negotiations.” The civil rights leader then left Albany. But a few weeks later, as the city failed to integrate the terminals or meet with the blacks, King told reporters, “I’m sorry I was bailed out. I didn’t understand at the time what was happening. We thought that the victory had been won. When we got out we discovered it was all a hoax.”

  Police Chief Pritchett was jubilant. “We met nonviolence with nonviolence and we are indeed proud of the outcome,” he said. Newspapers around the country jumped on the story. New York’s Herald Tribune called Albany “one of the most stunning defeats of King’s career.” King told reporters that, in the future, he would demand written agreements.

  Despite this setback, the Albany activists were relentless as the new year began. On January 12, 1962, eighteen-year-old Ola Mae Quarterman sat down in the front section of an Albany bus. The white driver asked her if she knew that blacks were supposed to sit in the rear. “I paid my damn twenty cents and I can sit where I want to,” she retorted. Quarterman was arrested and found guilty of using “vulgar language.” The police and the prosecution carefully avoided any mention of the issue of segregated seating on Albany’s buses. SNCC workers launched a bus boycott in support of Quarterman, and in three weeks the Montgomery-style strike had closed down the bus system. SNCC also sent students to the whites-only Carnegie Library, where they applied for library cards. The police escorted them out. Charles Sherrod was arrested for sitting in the white section of the Trailways bus terminal lunchroom. He was charged only with loitering; again the issue of segregation was not broached in court. “We don’t allow people to go in there and just make it their home,” said Chief Pritchett.

  In February, Martin Luther King, Jr., returned to Albany to stand trial for his December arrest. He was found guilty of marching without a permit, but the judge, requesting a transcript of the trial, delayed sentencing until July.

  Meanwhile, at the trial of the ten Freedom Riders who had come to Albany in December, SNCC’s Sherrod tried to take a seat in the front of the courtroom. Before he could do so, a court guard knocked him down and dragged him to the back of the room—where blacks were supposed to sit. When white SNCC activists Bob Zellner, Tom and Casey Hayden, and Per Laursen accompanied Sherrod to the black section, guards dragged them all out of the courtroom. The judge, looking on, simply commented, “The officers are enforcing the rules of the court.”

  At the sentencing of King and Abernathy in July, the men were ordered to pay $78 in fines or serve forty-five days in jail. Both leaders chose jail. The national press returned; King told reporters he would be sent to a work gang. President Kennedy, alarmed by the news, asked the Justice Department for a report on Albany. Burke Marshall, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, began talks with Pritchett and other Albany officials. He also spoke with Coretta Scott King, telling her the federal government was seeking her husband’s release. SCLC staffers rushed back to Albany, and a mass rally was scheduled for the next night.

  But just three days after the sentencing, King and Abernathy were released under peculiar circumstances. At the time, Chief Pritchett claimed that an unidentified black man had paid their fines. Pritchett has since admitted that he arranged for the payment to be made, but to this day, he refuses to divulge the full story.

  “I know what happened,” Pritchett said, “but frankly, you know, it was a matter of strategy. I knew that if he [King] stayed in jail, we’d continue to have
problems. So, I talked to some people. I said, ‘We’ve got to get him out and once we do I think he’ll leave here …’ Yes, it was done at my request. And it sort of surprised Dr. King. This was the only time I’ve ever seen when [it] seemed he didn’t know which way to go.”

  King called the move a “cunning tactic.” At a rally that night, Abernathy said, “I’ve been thrown out of a lot of places in my day but I’ve never been thrown out of jail.” He added, “I fought in France and in Germany for America. Now I wanted to fight on the streets of Albany for America. But, mysteriously, somebody paid the fine with hopes that they would get us out of jail. The chief broke my heart when he said that [we were going to leave town]. Of course, we are going to stay in Albany.”

  Local officials still refused to negotiate with black leaders. State and national politicians began to enter the arena. One of them, avid segregationist Marvin Griffin, promised during a campaign speech to put “Martin Luther King so far back in the jail you will have to pump air to him.”

  President Kennedy, in a nationally televised news conference, said, “I find it wholly inexplicable why the city of Albany will not sit down with the citizens of Albany, who may be Negroes, and attempt to secure for them, in a peaceful way, their rights. The U.S. government is involved in sitting down at Geneva with the Soviet Union. I can’t understand why the … city council of Albany … can’t do the same for American citizens.”

  Albany mayor Asa Kelley, who until now had favored offering concessions to blacks, said Kennedy had spoken “inappropriately” and could spark trouble by siding with the blacks. Kelley now refused to negotiate. Georgia senator Richard Russell declared, “The stamp of approval upon the constant violation of city laws from the highest source in our land is certain to encourage the importation of many other professionals and notoriety seekers and worsen an already bad situation.”

  The NAACP’s chief Washington lobbyist, Clarence Mitchell, met with Attorney General Robert Kennedy and proposed that the government begin backing up the president’s words by withdrawing federal assistance from the Albany area, particularly from Turner Air Force Base. A group of 100 ministers asked that the president address the civil rights crisis on national television—that he issue a modern version of the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that freed the slaves in 1863.

  As the situation in Albany became a national issue, King decided to take a more militant stance. After leaving jail he went to Atlanta, vowing to return in a week to lead “protests that will turn Albany upside down.”

  But before King could act, Federal District Judge J. Robert Elliott, a Kennedy appointee, issued a temporary restraining order to stop the demonstrations that had disrupted the city for eight months. King and other protest leaders were specifically ordered not to march. King, now back in Albany, said he would abide by the court order even though it took away the Albany Movement’s strongest weapon—public protest. “The federal courts have given us our greatest victories, and I cannot in good conscience declare war on them,” said King, talking to reporters in the yard of William Anderson’s home. But the minister added, “We regret to say that recent events have revealed to us that there are some federal judges in the South who are engaged in a conspiracy with state and political leaders to maintain the evil system of segregation.”

  “It is a fact,” said Burke Marshall, assistant attorney general for civil rights, “that the federal judge in that district [Elliott] … turned out to be a terrible judge. He was a terrible mistake.” John F. Kennedy was a pragmatic politician. Seeking to maintain southern ties, he made a point of listening to southern senators when making judicial appointments. Several such appointments on Kennedy’s part generated controversy among civil rights workers.

  Rev. Sam Wells, a long-time Albany activist, went to Shiloh Baptist Church the night after the court handed down its order and said he would march anyway. Wells waved the court document in the air, SNCC’s Sherrod recalls, and said, “I see Dr. King’s name. And I see Dr. Anderson’s name. And I see Charles Sherrod … But I don’t see Samuel Wells and I don’t see Miss Sue Samples and I don’t see Mrs. Rufus Grant. Now where are those names?” “And with that,” Sherrod says, “he marched about [160] folks out of the church that night and went to jail.”

  Two days later, Mrs. Slater King, wife of the Albany Movement’s vice president, took some food to arrested friends in the Camilla jail. The guards there ordered her away. “All you niggers away from the fence,” barked one officer. Mrs. King, who was pregnant, was carrying one child in her arms and had two more walking along beside her. She did not move quickly enough for the guards, and a sheriff’s deputy cursed at her. She told him to arrest her if he wanted to. The man knocked her down and kicked her until she lost consciousness. Mrs. King soon miscarried.

  On July 24, four days after Judge Elliott issued the restraining order barring all demonstrations, Appeals Court Judge Elbert P. Tuttle, an Eisenhower appointee, set aside the order. The next day the black community, enraged at Mrs. King’s beating, marched through the streets two-thousand strong. For the first time, protesters in Albany clashed violently with police. The demonstrators, many of them teenagers, threw bricks, rocks, and bottles at the police, who backed off without fighting back. Chief Pritchett, taking full advantage of the lapse by Martin Luther King’s followers, asked reporters, “Did you see them nonviolent rocks?”

  Pritchett’s statement sparked a crisis among the demonstrators, who had always portrayed themselves as nonviolent warriors in the fight against segregation. King had been ready to exert still more pressure on the city commission, but he called it off, asking for a “Day of Penance” among blacks to atone for the violence. SNCC’s Sherrod and other protesters, anxious to renew the Albany campaign, now criticized King. They maintained that nonviolence was a tactic, not the movement’s goal—the goal was desegregation of public facilities. Halting the marches now could jeopardize the movement’s progress. But King would not change his mind. With Sherrod and Abernathy he toured Albany’s pool halls and bars, asking that there be no more violence. Two white detectives, sent by Pritchett for King’s protection, came along. So did television crews.

  Police Chief Laurie Pritchett arresting King in Albany on July 27, 1962.

  “I hate to hold up your pool game,” King said at one stop. “I used to be a pool shark myself.” Then, over the clicking of pool balls, he said, “We are in the midst of a great movement … We have had our demonstrations saying we will no longer accept segregation. One thing about this movement is that it is nonviolent. As you know there was some violence last night. Nothing could hurt our movement more. It’s exactly what our opposition likes to see … we don’t need guns—just the power of souls.”

  Ralph Abernathy told the poolroom crowd that King’s words were not an appeal to “stop resisting the evil system of segregation. Nonviolence is the way for the strong, not the weak … those little guns that Negroes have for family protection are nothing to the arsenal the police have. But we have soul force. As they call for state troopers, we call God to send his heavenly angels …”

  Two days later, King led a prayer meeting in front of city hall. He wanted to meet with the city commissioners, who had refused to discuss the blacks’ demands. King and Abernathy waited outside with ten other people. Around 2 P.M., Abernathy kneeled on the ground and began to pray. “Can’t you see you’re causing a disturbance?” asked Chief Pritchett. Abernathy ignored him, praying even louder as reporters crowded around. Pritchett yanked the minister to his feet and arrested him. By 4 P.M., however, another group of demonstrators was at city hall; eighteen students and SNCC workers knelt down to pray and they too were arrested.

  One of the students, William Hansen, a white SNCC worker from Cincinnati, was placed in the whites-only section of the Dougherty Jail. A deputy sheriff told the other white prisoners, “This is one of those guys who came down here to straighten us out.” A prisoner replied, “Well, I’ll straighten him out.” Hansen was beaten
unconscious, his lip split open, his jaw broken.

  Black lawyer C. B. King heard of the beating and went to the jail to check on Hansen. After waiting anxiously outside Sheriff Cull Campbell’s office, King loudly insisted that every prisoner was entitled to medical treatment. Getting no response, he walked into the sheriff’s office. Campbell stood and said, “Nigger, haven’t I told you to wait out there?”

  Protesters in Albany not only sang and marched but also prayed. Typically, the police would arrest the protesters for being a “public nuisance.”

  Rev. James C. Harris, who had accompanied King to the jail, recalls that the sheriff then “picked up a walking stick out of a basket … and hit Mr. King over the head, breaking the cane. Mr. King escaped the office, and I did as well.” Later the New York Times reported that Sheriff Campbell admitted to the beating. “He didn’t get out, so God-damn it, I put him out.” Campbell told another newspaper reporter, “Yeah, I knocked the hell out of him, and I’ll do it again. I let him know he’s a damn nigger. I’m a white man, and he’s a damn nigger.”

  Meanwhile, Chief Pritchett was seeking a permanent restraining order to stop further demonstrations. He told Judge Elliott that Martin Luther King’s presence in Albany had “raised community tension to the kindling point.” Mayor Kelley, in a press conference, said that he and the city commissioners were “anxious to discuss problems with local Negroes”—after King left town. He declared that he would “never negotiate with outside agitators whose avowed purpose was to create turmoil.”

  On August 4 the city commissioners boasted in a statement to reporters that “firm but fair law enforcement [had] broken the back of the Albany Movement.” That movement had never been more than an invasion by a group of civil rights professionals, they added.