ACTIVISTS - part 2

Albany Movement and the Birmingham Campaign

In 1961 a desegregation group was formed in Albany, Georgia. It involved local activists and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, after its leader, Martin Luther King was criticized for not participating fully in the Freedom Rides, joined the newly formed desegregation group, now known as the Albany Movement.

The movement attacked every aspect of segregation within the city: African-Americans would sit-in at bus stations, libraries and restaurants reserved for whites. There were boycotts and protest marches on City Hall. Despite this and King’s personal involvement, the movement achieved very little, except for bringing to light the divisions between radical and moderate blacks.

The failure of the movement was mostly due to Laurie Pritchett, the local police chief. When King was arrested and refused to pay bail Pritchett arranged for his release, effectively forcing him out of jail, to prevent King’s imprisonment to rally the black community further.

After this King left, but the movement continued the struggle and eventually achieved some success. That fall an African-American came close to being elected to city council and next spring the city struck all the segregation ordnances from its books.

In 1963 the SCLC undertook the Birmingham campaign, a campaign focused on the goal of desegregating Birmingham’s downtown merchants. On April 12, 1963 the police performed a mass arrest of supporters and one of the arrested was Martin Luther King.

While in jail King wrote an open letter on the margins of a newspaper, in response to the statement made by white Alabama clergymen who agreed that social injustices were taking place but expressed the belief that the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts and not taken onto the streets. King’s response was that not only was civil disobedience justified in the face of unjust laws, but also that one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.