00:00 – Young lectured. 01:10 – Dent and Young continue discussing the movement in Albany, Georgia. Students from SNCC and SCLC working in voter registration decided to go to Albany after the ICC ruling eliminating desegregation of public accommodations. Charles Sherrod, Cordell Reagon, [Charles?] Jones, and Bernard Lee when into the white reading room of a bus station and were arrested. Dr. W.G. Anderson organized a movement to protest their arrest with the SNCC people who were not in jail in 1961. 03:10 – Albany was complicated because there was also an active NAACP chapter there and ministers involved with SCLC. Young describes the conflict between the groups. Ruby Hurley of the NAACP did not want to take part in the demonstrations. SNCC wanted to demonstrate, but not train. SCLC worked toward specific objectives. Key SNCC people were Jim Forman and Chuck Jones, neither of whom got along well with Wyatt Walker. 05:40 – SCLC tried to stay out of Albany. Martin Luther King, Jr. became involved when he was volunteered to lead the march and ended up being arrested. SCLC staff was Wyatt Walker, Dorothy Cotton, Jim Wood, Bernard Lee, Septima Clark, and Young. There was also a field worker in both Virginia and Louisiana. They were not ready to take on Albany, but were pulled into it. 07:30 – Dr. Anderson got sick in jail. They bonded everyone out and they were called back to trail the following year. King then decided to serve the time. 09:45 – Albany became national news because King was in jail. The press followed King, waiting for him to fail. There was a federal injunction placed prohibition demonstrations (in 1962). They violated city or state court injunctions, but not federal. King felt they should take it seriously. 12:08 – The Kennedys did it because of the importance of the upcoming Carl Sanders election. SCLC agreed the election was important, but did not think they should stop demonstrating. The moving wound down and they left Albany. Sheriff Pritchard was determined to keep violence down among white people. He treated people well in his jail. Sheriff Chapel was the one who had turned off the heat in the jail. The federal courts had been their ally. Defying the order would have projected a lack of respect for the court. 16:43 – Young talks more about Pritchard. He asked Young to ask Bobby Kennedy to have him nominated to be a U.S. Marshall. They did not get involved, but Young did act as a positive reference when he was offered the job of Police Chief in High Point, NC. 19:10 – Young considers Albany a learning experience. It was not a failure because they had nothing to lose. They had a successful voter registration drive following the movement. Sanders won the election by a margin the size of the black vote. This was the only case where the federal government worked against them. 21:30 – The legal argument and the political argument of the injunction. The various constituencies worked together. James Bevel joined the SCLC staff during the Albany Movement. The reason the movement existed was because it involved all the Civil Rights organizations under one group. Dr. Anderson was supporting SNCC financially, was a personal friend of King’s and was the president of the movement. Slater King was vice-president and his brother C.B. King was the attorney. 24:25 – Most of the Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement came out of Albany. [Another man’s voice chimes into the conversation.] They talk about other people involved in the Albany Movement. Slater King was killed in an automobile accident later. The churches where the mass meetings were held. 28:00 – Afterward, they shifted into the voter registration effort and helped Sanders win. Young talks about the Freedom Rides. [Bennett?] stuck with King through thick and thin. “Jesse and Herman sold out.” 30:30 – Young talks about SCLC deciding to leave Albany, but to continue political work in Georgia. They helped elect Charles Welton to the Congress and Leroy Johnson to the State Senate. Politics in Georgia. [Recording ends 32:00.]
