Despite Hollowell’s civil rights victories, some recalcitrant whites, bent on maintaining the Jim Crow social order, would require Hollowell and his comrades to fight legal battles county by county, school by school, public facility by public facility. Emboldened by civil rights courtroom victories but fed up with the glacial pace of change, both black and white youth sought more direct action. A more militant generation of activists emerged and “committed themselves to undertaking more direct assaults on the Jim Crow regime.”1 Young Freedom Riders took to buses all over the South to challenge the segregation of buses and terminals, while others set their sights on the crucial goal of voter registration.
On February 1, 1961, the first anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in, activists across the South engaged in renewed direct-action campaigns against racial injustice. Civil rights organizations such as SNCC and CORE staged protests in major cities and small towns. One notable challenge to the Jim Crow social order occurred in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Led by CORE leader Tom Gaither, ten activists in Rock Hill staged a sit-in at a McCrory’s lunch counter. Following their swift arrest by Rock Hill law enforcement officials, nine protesters opted for thirty days in jail instead of bail, the civil rights movement’s first widely publicized jail-in.
Determined to build on the courage of the group that became known as the “Rock Hill Nine,” Gaither telephoned SNCC leaders in Atlanta and pleaded for their help to expand the Rock Hill jail-in.2 The next day SNCC activists Charles Jones, Diane Nash, Ruby Doris Smith, and Charles Sherrod ventured to Rock Hill. During a protest at the Good Drug store, they were also swiftly arrested and sentenced to thirty days in jail.3 Displaying the same courage shown by the original nine protesters, Jones, Nash, Smith, and Sherrod also refused bail. Determined to sustain segregation and discourage further protests, the local magistrate sentenced the thirteen protesters to thirty days of hard labor on a chain gang.
Sherrod recalled how singing freedom songs gave him and his cellmates the strength to endure the injustice:
(Singing) Oh Freedom, Oh Freedom. (Speaking) Those songs gave us the spirit to keep on going. So we’re singing and praying and here comes the chief. “I won’t have no damn singing and no damn praying in my jail.” What are they going to do? We’re already in jail. So he puts us in the hole. The hole was a little small place with two beds in it. But there were thirteen of us. So they put thirteen of us in this small place and fed us bread and water. So we are in there singing! (Singing) I ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around. Oh Lord. Turn me around. (Speaking) We’re singing and praying. That’s what helped us in the hole. They put us back in the compound with everyone else, and the first thing we did was sing. (Singing) I ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around. (Speaking) And they put us back in the hole. Three more days on bread and water. They were trying to break our spirits. But we kept our spirits through the songs we sang.4
Freedom songs were a vital part of civil rights protests and demonstrations. Singing together stirred emotions and strengthened bonds among civil rights demonstrators, engendering an even greater resolve in their fight for justice. Hollowell, who often joined in the singing at mass meetings in various cities, remembered, “The songs and hymns like ‘Over My Head I See Freedom in the Air’ that had helped to bring people through slavery now were bonding them to each other and to the struggle. They stimulated and renewed a commitment to keep the faith.”5
Martin Luther King Jr. observes in Why We Can’t Wait: “I have stood in a meeting with hundreds of youngsters and joined in while they sang Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round.’ . . . A few minutes later, I have seen those same youngsters refuse to turn around from the onrush of a police dog, refuse to turn around before a pugnacious Bull Connor in command of men armed with power hoses. These songs bind us together, give us courage together, and help us to march together.”6
The freedom songs helped the Rock Hill inmates band together, endure the harsh conditions of their incarceration, and persevere in the struggle. Although their protests, subsequent jailing, and “jail-no-bail” policy did not bring an end to Jim Crow in Rock Hill, Sherrod recounted that the jail-in experience helped them to “grow up” and prepared them for future protests and jail-ins. For Sherrod and Charles Jones, the lessons learned in Rock Hill would be useful as they emerged as leaders among the “shock troops” of SNCC and the SCLC who converged on Albany, Georgia, in the fall of 1961.7 In Albany, as in Rock Hill, they embarked on a direct-action campaign to challenge racial discrimination and segregation.
Albany was at the time a moderately sized and thoroughly segregated city of about sixty thousand people, with blacks comprising approximately 40 percent of the population. It was the home of Turner Air Force Base and Albany State College, one of Georgia’s three public historically black colleges. Unlike surrounding rural towns in Southwest Georgia, in addition to blacks who worked as housekeepers, cooks, and other manual laborers, Albany was home to a diverse group of black professionals that included military personnel, college professors, doctors, nurses, entrepreneurs, and Chevene Bowers (C. B.) King, the only black lawyer in Southwest Georgia. King was a member of the well-educated and socially progressive family headed by Clennon W. King, a staunch civil rights activist and prominent businessman, and Margaret Slater, both graduates of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. Like Washington, Clennon King espoused education and economic development for blacks. Following his parents’ example and initiative, C. B. King had graduated from Fisk University and the Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
C. B. King met Hollowell by chance in 1949, while both men were traveling on a Jim Crow train car from Albany to Nashville. King was returning to Fisk, and Hollowell was on his way back to Loyola law school in Chicago after a Christmas visit with Louise in Atlanta. King learned that Hollowell attended Loyola and told Hollowell of his interest in a law career; the men discussed their shared passion for using the law as a tool to help bring about social justice. Like Hollowell, King later completed law school and started a law practice in Georgia focused primarily on civil rights. The next time the two met was when Hollowell traveled to Albany in 1954 to assist King on a voting rights case. Through their combined legal acumen and hard work, they prevailed in judicially forcing the desegregation of polling places in Albany. Over the next two decades, they would establish a brotherly relationship and partner in many civil rights battles in rural Georgia.8
C. B. King was an anomaly of epic proportions; he regularly took civil rights cases or defended black clients in the racially oppressive southwestern region of the state at great risk to his personal safety. His brilliance was matched by his raw nerve in taking on blatantly racist officials known for their brutality against blacks. Blacks in the area regarded him as their only hope for some measure of justice, while whites did not know quite what to make of this bold and articulate African American who, with his superior legal skills, regularly outmatched his white opponents.9
In addition to C.B., three of his brothers distinguished themselves as brilliant and courageous civil rights activists: Clennon Jr., Slater, and Preston. Clennon became the first African American to run for president of the United States in 1960 and the first African American to seek admission to the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss).10 Slater, a successful businessman like his father, helped launch the historic Albany Movement.11
Preston King achieved international stature in his protest against unfair treatment by the local draft board that resulted in his federal indictment as a draft dodger; his defense was led by Hollowell and C. B. King. Preston contended that the all-white draft board acted in a discriminatory manner by addressing him in official communications as “Preston” instead of “Mr. King” after his race became known. In a letter to NAACP counsel Robert Carter, Preston said, “I was not objecting to the mere use of my Christian name in itself, but to the obvious and profound sense of discourtesy which underlay it. . . . If the only means of avoiding prosecution open to me lies, in effect, in withdrawing the protest which I initially made, then I certainly do not see how I can avoid being prosecuted.”12 King insisted that he would not serve in an army “when even the form of induction is meant to imply that the country” he served was not his own, “that there [he was] not a man among men.” He affirmed, “Only cowardice would reverse the position; and, unhappily, I’m not a coward.”13
Preston King’s refusal to comply with the draft board resulted in an indictment by the United States Justice Department. Federal judge William Bootle presided over the case in April 1961, shortly after Hollowell’s success before Bootle in the UGA desegregation case. Preston King was convicted in the case but avoided jail after his prosecution by fleeing to England. He lived in exile—in England and elsewhere—for more than forty years. Preston ultimately won a full presidential pardon from President Bill Clinton in 2000.14
Despite the presence of civil rights stalwarts such as C.B., Clennon Jr., Slater, and Preston King, and notwithstanding Hollowell and C. B. King’s victory in the Albany voting rights case, the southwest region of Georgia was one of the most notoriously racist parts of the state, well known for its violence against blacks.15 Perhaps the most disreputable in terms of its inhumane treatment of blacks was Baker County, also known as Bad Baker County, located a few miles from Albany. Southwest Georgia native Herbert Phipps, now a Georgia Court of Appeals judge, recalled barbaric examples of racial violence in Baker County perpetrated by law enforcement officials. Phipps noted an especially atrocious lynching of a black man at the Baker County courthouse by Sheriff Claude Screws in 1945.16
Sheriff Screws, aided by a policeman and a special deputy, arrested Robert Hall, a black citizen of Baker County, at his home in the middle of the night on a warrant charging him with stealing a tire. Hall was handcuffed and taken by car to the courthouse, where he allegedly reached for a gun and tried to escape. Screws and his accomplices knocked the handcuffed Hall to the ground and beat him with their fists and a solid-bar black jack about eight inches long and weighing two pounds. They continued to savagely beat him for fifteen to thirty minutes, then dragged him feet first through the courthouse yard and into the jail, where they threw the dying man onto the floor.17
True to the custom and mores of the time, no state or local charges were filed against Screws. However, the crime at least led to a federal indictment charging that Screws had willfully caused Hall to be deprived of his Fourteenth Amendment rights. Surprisingly, in federal court Screws was found guilty of the egregious act, which deprived Hall not only of due process but also of his life. The Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, but in a shocking U.S. Supreme Court reversal, the court ruled that although the jurors found that Screws and his deputies willfully beat Hall to death, in order to convict, “it was necessary for them to find that petitioners had the purpose to deprive the prisoner of a constitutional right.”18 The court’s interpretation meant, for example, that Screws would be liable only if it was proven that the reason Screws beat Hall to death was to “make sure that no trial ever occurred.”19
This discouraging Supreme Court precedent was reminiscent of the pre-Civil War Dred Scott case, which declared that blacks had no rights that whites were bound to respect. In a scathing dissenting opinion, Justice Frank Murphy penned that Hall was “entitled to all the respect and fair treatment that befits the dignity of man, a dignity that is recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution. Yet not even the semblance of due process [had] been accorded him. He [had] been cruelly and unjustifiably beaten to death by local police officers.”20 As Taylor Branch writes, henceforth it would appear that “federal prosecutors in such cases had to prove that the defendants were thinking about constitutional violations while they committed heinous, primordial crimes.”21
Taking a page from Screws’s police brutality playbook, his successor, Warren “Gator” Johnson, continued his predecessor’s brand of violence toward blacks in Baker County. On July 4, 1961, according to FBI reports, Johnson savagely beat Charlie Ware, a black field hand who had flirted with a black mistress of the white overseer of Coca-Cola magnate Robert Woodruff’s Baker County plantation.22 After Johnson handcuffed Ware, Ware allegedly committed the customary act of handcuffed, imprisoned African Americans in Baker County and tried to escape. Johnson then shot him four times. Predictably, instead of a police brutality charge, Ware was charged with assaulting the sheriff. Miraculously, Ware survived the shooting, and contrary to the custom for blacks in such racially oppressive environments, he pled not guilty. Hollowell joined his comrade C. B. King and ventured into “Bad” Baker County in defense of Ware.23
On July 22, 1961, Ware provided a written statement to Hollowell and King describing his beating and shooting:
The sheriff hit me above the right eye with his gun or some other hard object. I still had on my glasses when [I was] hit, but they must have fallen when I fell to the ground after being hit. . . . I then addressed him as “chief.” He said, “I ain’t no chief, I am the goddamn high sheriff” He hit me a back hand lick in the mouth with his fist, causing my mouth to bleed. The right side of my face and my undershirt were covered with blood at this time as the wound over my right [eye] continued to bleed. . . . He got out of the car and took out a knife, opened it and told me to hold it for him. I was still seated. I held the knife which was about 6 inches in length including the handle. He then took out his pistol with his right hand and grabbed the microphone with his left hand. He said into the mike, this nigger has got a knife on me, and I’m going to have to shoot him. I heard a voice coming back over the mike say, “go ahead.” He put the gun in my face and fired three. He then said over the mike, he’s still coming on me. He fired about three more times. Two shots went in the left side of my neck, one just above the left collarbone, one in the left shoulder.24
Given the racial climate and the reputation of Baker County sheriffs for acts of violence against blacks, taking on the notorious “Gator” Johnson required extraordinary courage. Although Hollowell and C. B. King fearlessly represented Ware, they encountered a major hurdle in trying to find potential witnesses, who understandably feared reprisal from the sheriff. The evening before the trial, Ware’s brother called the home of C. B. King, where King and Hollowell were making final preparations for Ware’s defense. C.B.’s wife, Carol, remembered that Ware’s brother begged C.B. and Hollowell to come to his home before going to the trial the following day. Hollowell and King, thinking Ware’s brother had uncovered some evidence for the trial, postponed their legal preparations to drive some thirty miles to his rural home. Instead of evidence, Ware’s brother gave them a small bottle of potion to give to Ware for good luck. He instructed them to tell Ware to sprinkle the concoction over his head and body before going to court, and everything would be all right. Before an exasperated Hollowell and King could return to their car, Ware’s brother yelled to them that if any of the potion was left over, they should sprinkle some over their heads as well.25
The next morning, before a white judge (Judge Crow) and an all-white jury, Hollowell and King sought to defend Ware against the charge of assaulting Gator Johnson, who had shot the handcuffed Ware three times in the neck. Despite their best efforts, in the segregated courtroom with black spectators relegated to the balcony, the trial was quickly dispatched, and within ninety minutes the jurors declared Ware guilty. Hollowell and King filed an appeal for a new trial, including a challenge to the absence of blacks on the jury. Surprisingly, their persistence paid off as Judge Crow eventually released Ware without a new trial.26
Determined to challenge racial injustice on every front, in addition to defending Ware at his criminal trial, Hollowell and King filed a civil suit against Gator Johnson. Such a suit was a historic event in Southwest Georgia and an anomaly in the Deep South. Predictably, the all-white jury did not find that Johnson’s shooting of his unarmed prisoner violated Ware’s civil rights.27
In another incident involving Hollowell and Sheriff Johnson, Hollowell visited a group of black and white ministers locked up in the Baker County jail for civil rights protests, intending to provide them with a few amenities. Hollowell requested permission from Johnson to deliver cigarettes, then food, then the possibility of soap to the prisoners. On each account, Johnson insisted that he and his deputies could take care of the inmates. Making no progress with the sheriff, Hollowell said, “Okay” and turned to leave. Johnson replied, “Hey, don’t you ever just say ‘okay’ to me again. I’m the high sheriff here, and you ain’t nothin’ but a goddamn nigger.”28
It was in this racial environment that the shock troops of SNCC, along with Albany activists, launched the movement to bring about humane and equal treatment of Albany blacks in the fall of 1961. In addition to SNCC, SCLC executives and field representatives along with NAACP brass joined in orchestrating protests and negotiating a settlement for more equitable treatment of blacks in the city.29 Hollowell partnered with King to defend the protesters and negotiate with Albany officials on behalf of the various civil rights organizations to try to bring an end to segregation.
Freedom fighter and SNCC leader, and now congressman, John Lewis recalled that Hollowell and King were the central lawyers defending the demonstrators during the Albany Movement: “C. B. King and Don Hollowell, these two individuals, probably more than any other two lawyers, played a major role in defending the people that were arrested, people who had been beaten in jail in Albany—but not just in Albany—also Americus and other counties and communities nearby for a period of time. Albany became somewhat the first major mass movement, maybe after Montgomery. And it was well organized.”30
The campaign included mass demonstrations, bus boycotts, sit-ins, and jail-ins. Spurred by Freedom Rides across the South organized by CORE, in September 1961 the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) adopted more stringent regulations barring segregation in bus and train facilities.31 SNCC leaders recruited high school students to stage protests when they confronted obstacles in mobilizing Albany’s African American adults. Some adults were understandably concerned about bread-and-butter issues if they became openly involved in protests, while others perceived SNCC activists as too radical.
On November 1, the effective date of the new rules, SNCC members and local high school students planned to challenge the “whites only” waiting room of the Trailways bus station in Albany. The students were members of the Albany NAACP Youth Council, a group of high school and college students advised by business leader Thomas Chatmon. However, paralyzed by fear, the youth council students did not come.32 Youth council member Annette Jones (now Annette Jones White) recalls the events differently. She stated that Ruby Hurley had denounced SNCC for involvement with the youth council, “saying SNCC had no money for bail and would leave [them] in jail if [they] were arrested.” Jones contends, “She [Hurley] suggested that we wait before doing anything until we received approval from the NAACP’S national office.”33 According to Jones, the Youth Council members followed Hurley’s advice and postponed protest plans.
The contrasting advice from SNCC and NAACP leaders to the youth council members reflected a major source of disagreement between SNCC and the NAACP. SNCC advised students to operate autonomously and join SNCC’s direct-action campaigns, while the more cautious NAACP officials insisted that the students operate within the bounds of the well-established NAACP lines of authority. Although SNCC and more radical activists shared with established civil rights organizations a common vision to uplift blacks from second-class citizenship in Albany, tactical disagreements, infighting, and heated disputes about leadership and authority played out among the groups and their leaders during the Albany Movement action.
Whether the students were fearful of incarceration, coerced by Hurley, or (most likely) persuaded by some combination of these forces, they did not show up for the protests. Veteran SNCC activists Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon, who had traveled from Atlanta by bus to join the youth council members, were greeted by Albany policemen when they entered the white waiting room. Sherrod, whom Hollowell described as a bright and cheerful young man with a winsome smile and “a fearlessness and fierce determination to bring about radical change,” had led the charge to inspire Albany youth to directly challenge segregation.34 In addition to Sherrod and Reagon, SNCC member Charles Jones, who had been jailed with Sherrod and other demonstrators in Rock Hill, was a central figure in mobilizing Albany youth to protest segregation.35
Police Chief Laurie Pritchett, a staunch defender of segregation, learned of the bus station protest plan in advance and ordered his deputies to be as nonviolent as possible and to make no arrests under the local and state segregation laws, which would be vulnerable to appeal in the federal courts.36 Instead, Pritchett ordered police to make arrests on murkier grounds, such as creating a disturbance, loitering, trespassing, or parading without a permit.37 Pritchett also sought to avoid mass arrests or violence that would trigger publicity and possible federal intervention.
Sherrod and Reagon complied with the police order to vacate the white waiting room, and no arrests occurred. However, later that day, Sherrod and Reagon were able to coax nine youth council members to return with them to the station. When ordered by police to vacate the station, they complied, and although no arrests occurred, SNCC had been successful in motivating Albany high schoolers to become involved. This historic event ultimately engendered support and involvement from Albany college students and adults as well as a host of protesters who would converge on the city from across the nation.38
On November 17, less than a month after the precipitating event at the Trailways bus station, Chatmon, local osteopath William G. Anderson, Slater King, representatives of SNCC and the NAACP, local black ministers, and members of Albany’s Criterion Club, Federated Women’s Club, Voter’s League, and Lincoln Heights Improvement Association, as well as other progressive African American organizations, gathered at the home of E. D. Hamilton to discuss their strategy.39 Despite the courageous involvement of the NAACP Youth Council that Chatmon had successfully organized, the leaders lacked confidence in the moribund Albany NAACP branch, which had been virtually inactive for ten years.40 On the other hand, SNCC was relatively new to the area, lacking in financial resources, and in the eyes of some its radicalism did not make it a suitable organization to provide the kind of leadership needed. The lack of trust in any of the existing organizations to effectively represent the group, which comprised different tactical ideologies, spurred the leaders to create a new organization: the Albany Movement. The group elected Anderson as its president, Slater King as vice president, and Marion S. Page as executive secretary.41
Although SNCC representatives and other youthful members who advocated direct action spurred on the Albany Movement, the stated goal of the new organization was to challenge segregation, whenever possible through negotiation rather than direct action. The predominantly middle-class adult leaders of the group, who had achieved a measure of status and financial security, were more apprehensive about direct action, which would surely jeopardize their economic security and mar their records with jail time.42 Yet despite the influence of the forward-thinking adult leaders who prevailed in establishing more-moderate tactical goals for the movement, things accelerated to a fever pitch when a band of SNCC workers insisted on direct action to bring about change.
On November 22, the SNCC activists influenced NAACP Youth Council members and former Albany State students Evelyn Toney, Julian Carswell, and Robert Wilson to again challenge the whites-only policy at Albany’s interstate bus terminal. The threesome went to the Trailways bus terminal, purchased tickets, proceeded to the white waiting room, and were promptly arrested as expected. Later that afternoon, Chatmon secured the students’ release on bail of one hundred dollars each.
Hollowell’s former law clerk, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., who by now had become Georgia NAACP field director, advised Albany State students not to go to the bus terminal because the Georgia Board of Regents had a policy that students with federal or state litigation pending would be subject to immediate suspension from school.43 Despite Jordan’s attempt to dissuade Albany State students from arrests in order to protect their student status, a few hours later two Albany State students, Blanton Hall and Bertha Gober, entered the bus terminal’s white waiting room to purchase tickets. When they refused to obey a policeman’s order to move from the white ticket window, Pritchett ordered them to jail.44 The two students stayed in jail through Thanksgiving, and news of their incarceration quickly spread throughout Albany’s black community, engendering sympathy, support, and anger. In an adept analysis of the situation, Sherrod observed, “People were afraid, but when you started messin’ with their children they got mad.”45
As Jordan had warned, Albany State president William Dennis—undoubtedly pressured by segregationist officials who controlled the purse strings of the historically black college—promptly notified the students, “As a result of your being apprehended and arrested . . . you are hereby suspended indefinitely as a student”46 In light of the treatment of Aaron Brown, Dennis’s predecessor, whom the Board of Regents fired for his support of NAACP voter registration efforts, Jordan knew that the student protesters would be destined for expulsion.47 As the protests continued and many students were jailed, more than fifty other Albany State students faced the same fate as Hall and Gober. Janie Culbreth (now Janie Culbreth Rambeau), one of the students expelled from Albany State College for her participation in the civil rights movement, remembered: “When I was released from jail, I had a letter from Albany State College informing me that I had been expelled because of my participation in the demonstrations. . . . These were not troublemakers, but upstanding students, including Miss Albany State, Annette Jones, who lost her scholarship. We were expelled for the cause of human dignity”48
Annette Jones, after enduring a week in squalid conditions in an Albany jail with no working toilet, returned to Albany State to learn that she was among the student activists expelled because she was considered a danger to the college.49 Despite blacks’ assertions of civil rights and human dignity, Georgia’s leaders were determined to sustain segregation and lashed out at anyone who threatened the status quo, including a college president, honor students, and Miss Albany State. The treatment of Albany’s black college students who protested for freedom contrasted sharply with the treatment of white student rioters at UGA who had sought to disrupt the university’s desegregation a few months earlier. Dennis’s action led A. C. Searles, editor of Albany’s black-owned newspaper, to quip that Dennis was “the blackest white man I ever saw.”50 Even more troubling, Dennis swore to warrants charging Charles Sherrod, Charles Jones, and Cordell Reagon with criminal trespass.51
Although Dennis buckled under to the pressure of white segregationists, the students’ courage helped embolden the people of Albany to stage mass demonstrations for freedom and dignity. The Albany Movement called a mass meeting on November 25, with featured speeches by Anderson, C. B. King, Slater King, and Searles. The five arrested students, released from jail a day earlier, also provided powerful, moving testimonies. Bertha Gober, speaking on behalf of all of them, said her time in jail was necessary to show people that human dignity must be obtained even if it required suffering. “I feel that I have gained a feeling of decency and self-respect, a feeling of cleanliness that even the dirtiest walls of Albany’s jail nor the actions of my institution cannot take away from me.”52
On the afternoon of November 24, Chatmon traveled to Atlanta to meet with Hollowell, Jordan, and Ruby Hurley, the NAACP’S southeast regional director. Chatmon requested that Hollowell represent the three youth council members who had been released on bail. Hollowell traveled to Albany on November 27 and collaborated with C. B. King on the trials of all five arrested youths. It was the beginning of a long, arduous legal process that would lead to King and Hollowell’s representation of more than seven hundred jailed demonstrators, as well as negotiations on behalf of the Albany Movement to end segregation in the city. With a crowd of five hundred outside the courtroom outraged by the arrests, Hollowell and King represented the arrested students at their trial. The trial was interrupted by the presence of Charles Sherrod, who dared to sit on the white side of the segregated courtroom. Judge Abner Israel suspended the trial and summoned Hollowell and King to the bench. The two attorneys conferred with Sherrod, who subsequently left the courtroom.53 While their lawyering prevented any further jail time for the five students, the students were nevertheless convicted, and each was given a one-hundred-dollar fine and a fifteen-day probationary sentence.54
Meanwhile, the student protests continued, and many of the adult leaders, while not abandoning their preferred stance of negotiation, became more intensely involved in direct action. In addition to the protesters who lived in the Albany area, at the request of SNCC, an interracial group of Freedom Riders flooded the city to challenge segregation at various venues, including Albany’s railway terminal. Among the Freedom Riders were James Forman, executive secretary of SNCC; Lenora Tate, Atlanta University School of Social Work student; Bernard Lee, SCLC member; Tom Hayden, University of Michigan graduate and freelance writer; Robert Zellner, SNCC field worker; and Per Laursen, a Danish journalist commissioned by Viking Press to write a book on the Albany Movement.55
Mass arrests of the protesters, including some of Albany’s most prominent black leaders, prompted yet more protests. Sheriff Laurie Pritchett, staying on the safe side of federal law, continued to order arrests for disorderly conduct or obstruction of peace officers as opposed to charges for violating segregation ordinances. Nonetheless, the arrests were mounting, and on December 11, C. B. King told Jordan that he was experiencing difficulty defending the multitude of protesters and asked for Hollowell’s help.
The next day Jordan and Hollowell drove down from Atlanta to assist King with the case of Per Laursen, who was among a group of Freedom Riders charged with disturbing the peace, obstructing traffic, and failing to cross at a crosswalk. Hollowell and Jordan entered the courthouse after wading through some four hundred protesters gathered outside, singing freedom songs and engaging in prayer vigils. In the pouring rain, police herded the protesters into an alley adjacent to city hall and arrested 279 people. Following Pritchett’s orders, officials charged the protesters with disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and failure to obey an officer; the protesters were searched and marched off to jail cells. The children—a sizable portion of those charged—were separated from the adults, but all were jailed.56
In a clever effort to avoid filling the jails, a strategy often employed by civil rights leaders to force officials to concede to some of their demands, Chief Pritchett negotiated agreements for additional jail space with surrounding counties, including Baker and Terrell Counties, notorious for their cruel treatment of blacks. While some movement scholars have praised Pritchett’s tactics, such as ordering his deputies to maintain a nonviolent posture during the mass arrests, it should be underscored that although mayhem did not break loose on the level of the Birmingham civil rights movement, savage acts of police brutality did occur during the Albany Movement action. For example, William Hansen, a white SNCC Freedom Rider, was severely beaten in jail, and his jaw was broken by a group of inmates not inspired by the Freedom Riders’ cause. When C. B. King rushed to the jail to see Hansen, Sheriff D. C. (Cull) Campbell hit him on the head with a walking cane, literally cracking open his head.57 Campbell remarked, “I wanted to let him know . . . I’m a white man and he’s a damn nigger.”58
In another incident, Marion King, wife of Slater, was knocked down and severely kicked by a police official as she attempted to pass food to jailed protesters at a Mitchell County jail in Camilla, Georgia. Marion, who was pregnant at the time, later lost her baby due to injuries sustained in the incident.59 Charles Sherrod was also beaten in a Terrell County jail, and when he took a seat at the front of the courtroom during a trial for some of the Freedom Riders, police officers knocked him to the floor and dragged him to the back of the room.60 Chief Pritchett himself showed little compassion for the jailed protesters. In a conversation with members of the national press, he quipped, “There are three things I like to do. Drink buttermilk, put niggers in jail and kick reporters’ asses.”61 While the brutality by public officials had dire consequences for the victims, it also enraged members of the black community and encouraged even more to join in the struggle.
Hollowell, King, and Jordan returned to the courthouse on December 13 for the trials of the Freedom Riders. However, the judge continued the cases due to the city attorney’s involvement in a Georgia Supreme Court case. This was despite the fact that when Hollowell asked for a continuance on December 12 to provide additional preparation time, his request was summarily denied. When Hollowell, King, and Jordan left the courthouse on December 13, Slater King was leading a group on their knees praying in front of the courthouse. Police officials took Slater into the courthouse and asked him to disband the group, but he insisted that he would not obey the order until all 279 persons arrested on December 12 were set free.
Before Slater’s brother (C. B. King), Hollowell, and Jordan, Judge Abner Israel held Slater in contempt for demonstrating outside his court and sentenced him to five days in jail.62 Slater felt morally compelled to go to jail, inasmuch as his wife, Marion, had been incarcerated the previous day and was still in jail. On December 14, 204 more protestors were arrested for marching around the courthouse, bringing the total to nearly 400 in jail. Hollowell and King were now working practically around the clock to try to provide legal representation for the protesters, while at the same time trying to negotiate a settlement with city officials for their release.
The mass arrests, parceling protesters out to remote jail cells on back roads throughout Southwest Georgia, and dwindling resources for bail convinced some Albany leaders that they were in over their heads and would benefit from the high profile of Martin Luther King Jr. and the resources and organization of the SCLC. Anderson had also reneged on his promise to Jordan and Hurley to merge the efforts of the Albany Movement with the NAACP, creating a breach between the movement leaders and curtailing the full sharing of NAACP resources with the Albany Movement.
Jordan and Hurley had insisted from the outset that if the NAACP assumed responsibility for the protesters’ legal defense, the Albany Movement would be required to operate under the auspices of the NAACP. Albany Movement leaders thus vacillated between needing and requesting financial resources and other forms of assistance from the well-established NAACP and SCLC and wanting to maintain full control over decisions related to the protests. Adding to the complexity, SNCC leaders, who had created the momentum for the mass movement in Albany, continued to forge ahead with protests without seeking cooperation or approval from the NAACP or other organizations. Although the organizations shared the common goal of overturning the segregationist system in Albany, they lacked coordination in their tactics and disagreed on who should be in charge.
SNCC leader James Forman and Albany Movement official Marion Page strongly opposed inviting “De Lawd” (SNCC’S derisive term for Martin Luther King Jr.), contending that the awe-inspiring MLK would usurp local control and weaken the grassroots momentum.63 In contrast, Anderson insisted that MLK’S presence would inspire the masses and force the establishment to agree to their demands. Despite the sharp differences of opinion among Albany Movement leaders over the benefits of inviting MLK to join the protests, Anderson, supported by Bernard Lee and C. B. King, prevailed in persuading the group to invite Martin Luther King Jr.64
After more than five hundred demonstrators had been arrested, Martin Luther King Jr., the premiere civil rights leader in America, and his trusted comrade Ralph David Abernathy joined the fray on December 15. MLK spoke eloquently at mass meetings at Shiloh and Mt. Zion Baptist Churches.65 As expected, he roused the crowds and further inspired their activism. Anderson then issued MLK a public invitation to march with the people of the Albany Movement the next day.
While MLK and his advisers pondered the invitation in the pastor’s study, Anderson introduced the emerging movement’s leaders and lawyers. Anderson introduced Hollowell as the attorney from Atlanta. Hollowell, who had become a hero among Albany blacks for his work with C. B. King to gain the release of hundreds of protesters from jail, received thunderous applause. Speaking briefly to the crowd, interspersing grassroots activism with his legal work, Hollowell encouraged the assembly to protest. In his closing remarks, he said to the congregation, “If I were you, I’d plan to show up here again tomorrow morning early and wear your walking shoes.”66
Following prayers, the singing of freedom songs, and exhortations from movement leaders at Shiloh and Mt. Zion Baptist Churches, the next day Anderson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abernathy, and the Albany Movement activists proceeded to city hall for a prayer vigil.67 Abernathy’s eloquent prayer set the tone for the vigil:
Our Father and our God, we come to thee this afternoon with our hearts filled with love and with thanksgiving to thee. We ask thy blessings upon the city of Albany, upon its city officials, upon the mayor, the chief of police, and all the members of the police force. We pray, oh God, that Thou would touch the hearts of the leaders of this city and have them to know that there will be no peace in this community until those elected to high office will rise to stature and to the understanding that they will be willing to sit down and to talk and to discuss their problems with the leaders of the Negro people of this community. We pray that those of us who keep this vigil, this prayer vigil, here at the city hall, may have our hearts fixed aright and let there be no hate or animosity in our hearts.68
Despite Abernathy’s prayer for peace and an opportunity to sit down and discuss issues with city officials, later that day MLK, Abernathy, Anderson, and another 264 demonstrators were herded off to jail by Pritchett on the charge of parading without a permit, bringing the total arrested to more than seven hundred.69 Pritchett vowed, “We cannot tolerate the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or any other nigger organization trying to take this town over by mass demonstration.”70 Martin Luther King Jr. was taken to jail in Americus, Georgia, where he said, “[I am] being treated like a prisoner. I wish some people could be a little more courteous. The guards in this jail call me ‘boy.’ I might note that I am the pastor of a church with 4,000 members.”71
The arrests crowded the local and surrounding county jails, and despite Pritchett’s penchant for so-called nonviolent arrests to avoid national attention and federal intervention, the media was focused on Albany, and the continued protests were becoming a major issue for Pritchett and city officials. At the same time, money for bailing out protesters had been exhausted, jailed protesters’ jobs were in jeopardy, and the conditions in the jails were deplorable. Both sides had an incentive to resolve the crisis.
Hundreds of protesters, including celebrities and activist college students from across the nation, continued to converge on the city. On December 18, Hollowell, in collaboration with Art Levin of the Anti-Defamation League, Paul Rilling of the Southern Regional Council, C. B. King, and Page negotiated with Mayor Asa Kelley and Chief Pritchett on a proposed sixty-day truce.72 A verbal agreement was reached to allow local adult demonstrators to sign their own bonds and go free and to allow Albany Movement leaders to sign bail for juveniles.
The proposal also stipulated compliance by the city with the ICC directive on bus and train facilities, the formation of an eight-man biracial committee of white and black Albany citizens, and an agreement that demonstrations would be called off for sixty days.73 Despite Hollowell and C. B. King’s exhaustive all-day negotiation efforts, however, Hollowell reported that Kelley and Pritchett would not agree to negotiate after the end of the sixty-day truce, and they refused to sign the agreement.74 City officials also insisted that Martin Luther King Jr. leave Albany and refused to lower bail for the Freedom Riders or other protesters considered “professional agitators” responsible for starting the racial turmoil.75
Meanwhile, after Page, Hollowell, and C. B. King returned from the meeting with Kelley and Pritchett, they called Hurley, Jordan, Ella Baker, and MLK’S executive assistant, Wyatt Tee Walker, into a meeting with the executive committee of the Albany Movement. In addition to Page and C. B. King, Albany Movement leaders present were Charles Jones; Irene Asbury Wright, former dean of students at Albany State, who had resigned her position in protest of President Dennis’s attempts to suppress student activism; and Wright’s husband, Air Force lieutenant Thomas Victor Wright, stationed in Albany.76
Hollowell asked for the leaders’ recommendations in light of the city officials’ refusal to commit to negotiations at the end of the sixty-day cooling-off period. Because of the squalid and dangerous conditions in the jails, Hurley insisted that the primary concern was to secure the release of the jailed protesters. On the other hand, Jones and the Wrights advocated that the movement should not accept the terms of the agreement if the commissioners remained unwilling to commit to negotiations after sixty days. Furthermore, they contended that the city’s willingness to desegregate bus and train facilities was not a major concession since the ICC had issued more-stringent regulations barring segregation in bus and train facilities effective November 1. Jordan and Hurley suggested that the committee accept the agreement and start a voter registration campaign to undermine the power of the commissioners and an economic boycott to force further concessions. Although Jones continued to express his displeasure, in the end the committee voted “that they would go along with the conditions until January 1, and not demonstrate, in return they [would] get the people out of jail.”77
Although the settlement was far less radical than the more militant element of the movement wished, after generations of repression, at least blacks in this Deep South town had achieved a realistic expectation of some changes in the social order. At a prayer meeting following the settlement, Hollowell told the crowd, “Albany will never be the same.”78 The deep commitment and courageous spirit of Albany blacks were summed up by a woman on the Albany Movement executive committee who declared, “We are anything but through with the fight to be full citizens right here in Albany. . . . Anybody who thinks this town is going to settle back and be the same as it was has got to be deaf, blind, and dumb.”79
Martin Luther King Jr.’s presence and jailing brought new momentum and wider press coverage to the events in Albany. However, his international stature and charismatic presence did little to mend the rifts between the NAACP, the Albany Movement, and SNCC leaders. The fact that the media focused on MLK and obscured the role of SNCC’S grassroots activism in initiating the Albany Movement and inviting MLK to join the Albany protests only heightened the tensions between SNCC and the SCLC. As with MLK’S involvement in the Atlanta student sit-ins, local blacks benefited from the national attention that resulted from calling in the towering Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC to help with the protests. Disagreements, however, developed over such issues as who should be in charge of the local movement, who should serve as the spokesperson, and which organization should be financially responsible for bailing protesters out of jail. SNCC activists Sherrod and Reagon as well as local leaders Marion Page and Slater King opposed any intervention of the SCLC in Albany.80
Although many Albany Movement leaders deferred to MLK, others openly resisted the notion that he was the leader of the protest movement in Albany. In fact, Albany Movement leader Marion Page, with Hollowell at his side, announced at a press conference that it was not true that MLK and the SCLC were taking over leadership of the Albany Movement. When asked by a reporter whether the Albany Movement was divorcing itself from the SCLC, Page punctuated his opposition to the idea, insisting that there had never been unity with the SCLC. Likewise, Jones emphasized that the protests in Albany were the work of the Albany Movement and not Martin Luther King Jr.81 As Clayborne Carson observes in his seminal article “Civil Rights Reform and the Black Freedom Struggle,” although MLK played a major role in the Albany Movement in 1961–62, “he joined a movement that was already in progress and worked alongside indigenous leaders who often accepted but sometimes rejected his advice.”82 The acknowledgment of the vital and autonomous roles that the local leaders played in the civil rights movement does not diminish MLK’S enduring legacy but instead shows that his preeminence was rooted, in part, in social movements instigated by indigenous leaders who sometimes differed strongly with him.
Ironically, Hollowell, who was MLK’S attorney in Albany as well as local counsel for the LDF in Atlanta and the southeast region, worked closely with Jones, Page, and Ella Baker even though they opposed MLK and the SCLC leadership in Albany.83 Baker played a pivotal role in the founding of SNCC and was a key mentor to SNCC activists.84 Baker, an effective and longtime community organizer, was on the staff of the national NAACP in the 1940s, courageously organizing NAACP branches in hostile areas in the Deep South.85 In the early 1960s, she served as executive director of the SCLC. She was “an articulate and outspoken woman with a feminist consciousness far ahead of her time.”86 She therefore found it problematic to work within an organization made up of predominantly black clergy who were accustomed to seeing women only in compliant roles.
Although Martin Luther King Jr. and Baker together organized the Southwide Youth Leadership Conference on Nonviolence held on the campus of Shaw University in April 1960, which led to the birth of SNCC, Baker, who resisted the top-down leadership of the NAACP and the SCLC and advocated the empowerment of the student activists, emerged as the trusted adviser to SNCC. Baker’s long experience in grassroots organizing had taught her that enduring change must come from people and their communities trusting their own capacities and growing their own indigenous leadership. The militant young activists perceived the strategies of the major civil rights organizations as overly cautious and too gradual in delivering social change. They therefore gravitated to Baker, who encouraged them to develop their own leaders and establish their own strategies and pace for bringing about change, and remain independent of the existing civil rights organizations.87
Not surprisingly, internal differences emerged between the maverick Baker and young activists, on the one hand, and the SCLC leadership in Albany, on the other. Baker did not conform to the traditional role for women, encouraged the autonomy of SNCC and local activists, and often publicly and firmly resisted the dominance of the NAACP and the SCLC in local protests. Hollowell, who had worked closely with the student demonstrators in the Atlanta Student Movement, embraced Baker and the student activists in Albany. For example, Hollowell and Baker actually helped Page prepare a press release that disputed a report from MLK’S trusted adviser Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, stating that the SCLC had assumed direction of the Albany Movement. According to the transcript of a telephone conversation between Jordan, Hurley, and NAACP official Gloster Current, Hollowell had become the central figure in the negotiations; the transcript revealed that “Jones now [had] Hollowell on his side” and that “Hollowell [was] now calling the shots and [had] the ball and [was] not going to give it up.”88 However, Jordan and Hurley concluded during the conversation that Hollowell was tired, under a great deal of pressure, and difficult to communicate with.
Interestingly, Hollowell represented Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP while at the same time maintaining a good rapport with the more radical Jones and Baker, who operated outside the protocols of the well-established and tightly structured NAACP and SCLC. Andrew Young, MLK’S trusted adviser, emphasized that Hollowell’s work with demonstrators in Albany was different from the traditional approach to demonstrators by NAACP lawyers:
Don Hollowell and the NAACP LDF came down to intercede and represent us legally. I saw his cool demeanor. He was different from the New York NAACP lawyers. They want to tell us what we had to do and what we couldn’t do. And Don Hollowell would say, “Now, gentlemen, these are your alternatives. If you do such and such, this will happen; if you do such and such, this will happen”’ He said, “You decide what you must do; we will defend you regardless of what you do” It was a new attitude between lawyers and people who were advocates of civil disobedience. . . . Hollowell was the lawyer that lived here with us, and so he acted as a bridge and as an interpreter between the civil disobedience nonviolent direct-action movement and the traditional legal approach to change the Constitution case by case. And he did a masterful job.89
A distinctive aspect of Hollowell’s lawyering was his ability to work closely with a wide spectrum of civil rights activists. In addition to Hollowell’s service as chief lawyer to Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and other movement leaders as well as his role as chief negotiator for the movement, he was also well respected by the more radical elements of the direct-action movement.90 Speaking of Hollowell’s effectiveness as a lawyer and his support for direct action, Preston King observed, “Att[orne]y Hollowell was more southerner than northerner. He was an artist, even effete, in his management of the law. But he was fully attuned to the popular movements of protest that roiled the cities.”91
On the one hand, Hollowell cannot be identified merely as a lawyer, in view of his profound grasp of the need for extralegal movements to reshape the law. Nor can he be identified as a mere proponent of public protest, given his acute sensitivity to the need to impose on such protest the restraint of legal form. The NAACP, at one end of the spectrum, advocated social change through legal change, as in the case of Brown v. Board of Education and the panoply of NAACP cases. The Albany Movement, the SCLC, and SNCC, at the other end of the spectrum, were principally committed (if in starkly divergent ways) to achieving legal change through social change, through such means as sit-ins, boycotts, and related actions. While such divergent change agents (legal appeal versus social protest) are complementary, they are also potentially conflicting. Hollowell—no more a buttoned-up NAACP lawyer than a forthright SNCC organizer—developed an exquisite proficiency in the law, fundamentally informed by an intuitive appreciation of and respect for the role of “the street.” He and C. B. King, in this delicate intermediacy, mirrored each other.
Hollowell, unlike the NAACP or indeed the SCLC, seemed to have no overarching or exclusionary political strategy. In an appropriately legal manner, he developed his position case by case. He worked with those change agents prepared to work with him, whether SCLC, NAACP, SNCC, or other. For instance, Hollowell took on the case of Preston King, who defied the federal government’s order of military conscription on the basis of the military’s discriminatory treatment of African Americans. The NAACP washed its hands of the Preston King case, recommending to King that he comply with federal orders, as issued by the Albany, Georgia, segregationist Selective Service Board. But Hollowell, along with C. B. King, energetically defended Preston King in that face-off. The NAACP would not take on the Preston King case because its basic strategy was to deploy the federal government as a partner in facing down local segregationist practices at southern sites. The NAACP therefore did not wish to confront the federal government as an adversary, especially in the South. Similarly, the SCLC’S strategy was overwhelmingly to urge the federal government to intervene against segregation only at the state and local levels, not to protest the segregation practiced by federal agents themselves.
The NAACP’S and the SCLC’S unwillingness to engage in the Preston King case makes sense given their strategies, but Hollowell operated under no such constraints. He could actively link with the twenty-year-old Preston King, just as he could with SNCC activists in the same age bracket. Whereas Hollowell sought only to further, not to control, the black freedom struggle, the NAACP and the SCLC did vie to impose their vision of how the struggle should play out. The NAACP and the SCLC had major tactical differences and conflicts, as evidenced by disagreements between Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins. Thus, at times they clashed with each other as well as with SNCC. Plainly, SNCC had reason to be suspicious of the hegemonic pretensions of both the NAACP and the SCLC. But they had no such suspicions of Hollowell, who remained rigorously independent throughout.92
It is unclear whether Hollowell’s support of the more radical element of the Albany Movement, which publicly resisted MLK’S leadership in Albany, created a rift between MLK and Hollowell. It is interesting to note, however, that although Hollowell continued his ascent as the premiere civil rights lawyer in Georgia, he did not represent Martin Luther King Jr. in any major cases after the Albany Movement.
After the agreement was reached between Hollowell, C. B. King, and Page, which the city refused to sign, MLK, Abernathy, and Anderson were released from jail on bond. Hollowell explained to MLK, Abernathy, and Anderson that there was “a gentlemen’s understanding that none of the jailed demonstrators would be brought to trial, although their release would not include dropping charges.”93 MLK was distrustful of the agreement and repeatedly asked whether these “white folk could be trusted.”94 Although MLK was disappointed with the unsigned agreement, he reluctantly allowed himself to be released from jail and conceded that he “would not want to stand in the way of meaningful negotiations.”95 Masses of released protesters poured from jails all over Southwest Georgia. MLK and Abernathy then returned to Atlanta, which Albany officials hoped would dampen the momentum of the movement. To their dismay, Sherrod and SNCC demonstrators continued to protest segregated facilities in Albany, and their efforts kept Hollowell and C. B. King busy bailing them out of jail. Sherrod said, “If they put me in jail, it would be just a matter of time before Don would be coming to get me out.”96
Not surprisingly, the concern of Hollowell and movement leaders over the lack of a written agreement was well founded: the city refused to uphold the verbal agreement or negotiate further, while Pritchett unabashedly denied any settlement with the Albany Movement. Tensions and disagreements among the movement’s factions resurfaced, with SNCC leaders blaming Martin Luther King Jr. for the weak, unsigned agreement. Media outlets had a field day in their criticism of MLK and the Albany Movement, focusing on the infighting and intergroup conflict rather than on the scores of blacks going to jail to assert their claim to equal rights.97
Indisputably, the agreement was weak, and political rivalries, competing egos, and tactical disagreements did exist. Nonetheless, it was historic for such a broad spectrum of African Americans in Southwest Georgia to band together and put their lives on the line to fight for their freedom and dignity. One of Hollowell’s recollections speaks volumes about the historical significance of these events. On one occasion, at about two-thirty in the morning when he was at the Albany jail working with Pritchett to process a new wave of demonstrators, Hollowell asked an elderly gentleman named Jefferson how he felt. Jefferson replied, “I feel fine, Mr. Hollowell. I am just so happy that I have lived long enough to be able to see Negroes in Albany stand up for their rights. I never thought I would live that long. So you see, I feel good.”98
Renewed conflicts between protesters and the city occurred and plunged Albany into months of civic and legal chaos. Disappointingly for Albany officials, the protests and subsequent jailing continued. Hollowell and C. B. King worked tirelessly to counsel the scores of protesters, seeking to post bond for each of the jailed protesters. Although Pritchett was a formidable adversary, Hollowell and King established a reasonably good working relationship with him. They arranged for the release on their own recognizance of those detainees who could demonstrate that they owned any form of personal property. Since cash was in short supply after hundreds of individuals had already been bailed out of jail, this arrangement was a major asset to the Albany Movement.99
Months later, on July 12, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abernathy returned to Albany for sentencing from their December arrests. Judge A. N. Durden Sr. sentenced them to pay a $178 fine or spend forty-five days in jail. When Hollowell asked Judge Durden for the legal basis for his order, Durden responded that “he didn’t have any” but asserted that his decision was based on “general research of the law.”100 Durden also declared that it was the duty of a police officer to break up gatherings of people on the streets or sidewalks “although no violence might be involved.”101 Durden’s decision, without legal basis, revealed the difficulty that lawyers such as Hollowell and C. B. King experienced in asserting the rights of protesters in a white-controlled system bent on sustaining segregation. Contending that their arrests on charges of disorderly conduct were a transparent legal ploy, “in true Gandhi fashion” MLK and Abernathy refused to pay the fine and opted for jail.102
Meanwhile, Albany Movement leaders, in concert with national civil rights leaders, used the arrests of hundreds of college students, professionals, working people, and even children to dramatize the ironic contrast between the United States’ attempt to sell democracy abroad and the undemocratic treatment of black citizens at home.103 At the same time, state and local authorities refused to even acknowledge that Albany’s black citizens were desperately seeking social justice. Instead, public officials sought to downplay the crisis and charged that a few outside agitators were responsible for the racial demonstrations.
For example, Governor Vandiver told a news conference, “We have information that six outside agitators were sent into Albany several weeks ago to stir up trouble and they are still there. They have been connected with organizations which have been designated as subversive.”104 Rabid segregationist Peter Zack Geer, a Democratic politician and Vandiver’s ally, even proffered that the demonstrations were staged for the personal aggrandizement of MLK and other leaders. Geer stated, “It is quite clear that Negroes who have been engaging in public demonstrations have been doing so without just provocation, and are only helping to fatten the pocketbooks of Martin Luther King, Jr., and others of his obnoxious ilk.”105
Although it is true that a handful of SNCC members and Freedom Riders, who were also veterans from civil rights battles across the Deep South, played a pivotal role in the onset of the demonstrations, they had inspired a broad spectrum of the local black community, long weary from generations of oppression, to rise up and challenge injustice. The protests continued to engender national media attention and even a measure of support from President Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and Justice Department officials. At a press conference, responding to a reporter’s question about the Albany crisis, President Kennedy stated:
Let me say that I find it wholly inexplicable why the city council of Albany will not sit down with the citizens of Albany, who may be Negroes, and attempt to secure them, in a peaceful way, their rights. The United States government is involved in sitting down at Geneva with the Soviet Union. I can’t understand why the government of Albany, the city council of Albany, cannot do the same for American citizens.106
Pritchett and city officials, who feared that the increased national attention to MLK’S incarceration would lead to federal intervention, maneuvered to recruit B. C. Gardner, a law partner of Mayor Kelley, to surreptitiously pay MLK’S and Abernathy’s fines under the cover story that an anonymous black donor had paid the fines.107 Following his release, Abernathy later remarked, “I’ve been thrown out of lots of places in my day . . . but never before have I been thrown out of jail.”108 Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the devious scheme that resulted in his release. Perhaps as an apology for his underhanded behavior, Pritchett reversed his denial of the unsigned settlement negotiated by Hollowell and C. B. King, promising them that the cases against the seven hundred protesters from the previous December would be dropped and the proposed biracial commission would be convened.
In the meantime, a major setback occurred. Although by 1960 the federal courts had become moderately progressive in defending civil rights, not all members of the federal judiciary were so enlightened. In a move against all forms of civil disobedience in Albany, federal judge J. Robert Elliott, an “avowed segregationist” still steeped in the customs and mores of the time, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stall the marches and protests.109 However, the Albany city fathers had secured the TRO without notifying Martin Luther King Jr. or Albany Movement officials. Despite objections by Hollowell and C. B. King, Elliott contended in his ruling that the protests and consequent response by law enforcement officials constituted a denial of white people’s rights to equal protection by making police and other resources unavailable to the white citizenry.
Responding to renewed protests and the TRO, Hollowell and C. B. King telephoned veteran NAACP attorney Constance Baker Motley to assist them in representing MLK, Abernathy, and the other protesters. Motley’s first order of business was to assist Hollowell and C. B. King in filing a motion with court of appeals judge Tuttle to overturn the TRO. In light of Tuttle’s favorable ruling in the Holmes v. Danner case, Hollowell and Motley filed the appeal with strong confidence that they would receive a fair hearing in Tuttle’s court. Hollowell, Motley, and C. B. King prepared the motion at Hollowell’s office in Atlanta. William Kunstler, who became famous in the 1960s for his involvement in cases related to Freedom Riders, also provided support as well as an extra measure of national visibility. Before Judge Tuttle, with Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King seated in the courtroom, Motley, Hollowell, C. B. King, and Kunstler successfully argued their case. Tuttle promptly vacated what he termed a “preliminary injunction” issued by Judge Elliott.110
Though some protesters had defied the injunction, this significant victory allowed the marches and protests to continue legally and, more importantly, established a significant precedent by a federal appeals court that protected the rights of civil protesters from not-so-enlightened judges. Indeed, any victory was welcome given the horrid conditions to which blacks were still subjected in Southwest Georgia. Constance Baker Motley’s memory of the decrepit jail on a dirt road in which MLK and Abernathy were incarcerated speaks volumes:
When we finally found the jail and parked our car, the three of us went in. I instantly ran back out, overcome by the stench. . . . King and Abernathy were in a cell to the left of the main entrance. Hollowell and C. B. King, having been in the military during World War II, were not distressed by the smell of the latrine, so they stayed in the room near the entrance where King and Abernathy were being held. . . . We could hear other prisoners in a back room yelling and moaning. I was frightened to death. C. B. King and Hollowell seemed unperturbed; they were accustomed to visiting rural Georgia jails. My visit to the jail was the most horrendous experience of my life.111
The overcrowded, rat-infested jails like the one Motley visited, in which Pritchett had deposited the protesters, further refute the claim that Pritchett’s treatment of Albany protestors was nonviolent or humane. Although he did not resort to dogs and fire hoses, as did the infamous sheriff “Bull” Connor in the 1963 Birmingham civil rights protests, to characterize Pritchett’s actions as “humane” is a gross distortion. Unlike Connor, Pritchett was smart enough not to display inhumane treatment publicly, where it could have been captured by the media and forced the city to concede more readily to the protesters’ demands.
Although civil rights efforts in Albany are not as well known as those in cities such as Montgomery or Birmingham, the Albany Movement has great historical significance and contributed to the momentum of the 1960s civil rights struggle. Hollowell was a pivotal figure and a strong behind-the-scenes force in those efforts. Civil rights leader Joseph Lowery summed up Hollowell’s and C. B. King’s roles:
When the Albany Movement heated up in ‘61 when King got arrested, it was [Hollowell and C. B. King] who stepped into the breach, who filed lawsuits, who tried to fight off the attempts of Chief of Police Laurie Pritchett to suspend the First Amendment in Albany. Hollowell and C. B. King raised the legal questions and forced the government at the local, state, and national levels to face the issues of segregation and discrimination and brutality on the part of law enforcement officials. They did it brilliantly, and Albany was never the same.112
Hollowell’s lawyering in the Albany movement solidified his reputation as a foot soldier for equal justice. Together, he and C. B. King represented more than seven hundred protesters, and their meticulous work to clear their clients’ records and help them return to their jobs continued long after the marches and the media attention ceased. As far as the student protestors were concerned, Hollowell had earned a general’s star. As Joseph Lowery noted, “The kids used to say, ‘King is our leader, Hollowell is our lawyer, we shall not be moved. King is our leader, Hollowell is our lawyer, we shall not be moved.’”113 Many credit Hollowell and his colleagues with providing the hope and support needed to keep the movement going. For example, Morris Brown president emeritus Robert Threatt has observed, “When black people see lawyers like King and Hollowell and Motley, it gave them courage because they knew that when I get arrested for demonstrating or picketing or marching, I’m gonna have somebody to speak for me.”114
Though the Albany Movement did not immediately achieve its stated goal, the movement was a landmark crusade in the struggle for freedom in the 1960s. Notwithstanding the crucial organizing work of SNCC, any fair and objective analysis would conclude that the tireless efforts of Hollowell and C. B. King helped to underpin the movement. Moreover, their efforts contributed significantly to Martin Luther King Jr.’s development as a civil rights tactician. As Carol King put it, “Albany was the school for Martin.” She observed that the lessons MLK learned ranged from the legal actions required to overturn a federal injunction banning civil rights marches to how to cope with the duplicitous tactics of a police chief such as Laurie Pritchett, concluding that these lessons would be useful in his civil rights protests in other cities.115 Likewise, Martin Luther King Jr. himself observed that the experience he gained during the Albany protests was pivotal in planning strategy for the Birmingham protests a few months later, and that the lessons learned from Albany helped make later campaigns in other cities more effective.116
Albany was a crucial proving ground for ordinary black citizens as well. In addition to the progress toward unraveling Albany’s apartheid-like conditions, many once-quiescent blacks came of age in their willingness to fight and go to jail, if necessary, to demand their civil rights. Bernice Johnson Reagon, who joined the Albany Movement as a college student and went on to work for SNCC, recounted the importance of the movement for black empowerment. Reagon also offered a still-relevant critique of the scholarship on the Albany Movement. In a 1978 interview, she stated, “When I read about the Albany Movement, as people have written about it, I don’t recognize it. They add up stuff that was not central to what happened.” Reagon noted that scholars have focused too much attention on the movement’s meaning for Martin Luther King Jr., the tactics of Sheriff Pritchett, and the legal or political milestones. She stressed that what mattered to her was that the movement gave her “the power to challenge any line that limits [her].” She insisted, “That is what it meant to me, just really gave me a real chance to fight and to struggle and not respect boundaries that put me down.”117 Similarly, Charles Sherrod, reflecting on the criteria for successful civil rights activism, asserted that such activism comprised “a psychological battle for the minds of the enslaved.”118 Self-reliant indigenous leaders in Albany, as in other local movements, played key roles in mobilizing blacks and “articulating the emergent values of the local struggles.”119
Janie Culbreth recalls how Sherrod and his SNCC comrades inspired youth in Albany. Sherrod and SNCC activists led black youth to join them in initiating protests in Albany by asking, “Why do you have to go to the back door to get food, and why do you have to drink from the ‘colored’ water fountain. Why do you have to go to the ‘colored’ restroom?”120 Culbreth observes that students rarely receive credit for their work and their sacrifice in the movement. She argues:
I am pained when I read books or see articles that call Albany Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Waterloo. It can’t be your Waterloo unless it was your fight in the beginning. It was the people’s movement, not his. He came and he did a lot of good, but he came because the Albany Movement invited him to join us. The Movement was already underway with several hundred people in jail when Dr. King first came to Albany.121
The prevailing scholarly narratives that focus on Martin Luther King Jr., the SCLC’S and the NAACP’S roles in Albany, Laurie Pritchett’s tactics, the assessment of legal and political achievements, and the internal differences among civil rights groups are vital components in the study of the Albany Movement. However, any objective and comprehensive analysis of the Albany Movement must highlight the importance of SNCC activists who collaborated with local people and set the stage for the movement and who subsequently labored for civil rights in Albany long after MLK and the SCLC had left the city.
In his book Beyond Atlanta, Stephen Tuck chronicles the triumphs and challenges of the black freedom struggle in Albany in the several decades following 1961–62, the time period in which many scholars define the Albany Movement as beginning and ending.122 Charles Sherrod, for example, went back into the nearby rural areas of Baker, Terrell, Lee, and Dougherty Counties to continue the voter registration project as the Albany campaign slowed. Although Sherrod and his SNCC comrades were no longer in the limelight, they continued to perform the often tedious, unglamorous, and dangerous day-to-day civil rights work that ultimately brought about social change in Southwest Georgia, including officials’ elimination of segregation ordinances in March 1963.123 In an interview at his home near neighboring Terrell County, Sherrod remarked that the county, known for its past racial violence toward blacks, is now one of the safest places for blacks in the state. “Terrell County has a black mayor, black sheriff, black police chief, and the majority of the elected officials are black.”124 Sherrod also made Albany his home, served on the Albany City Council, and continues to work with grassroots organizations advocating racial justice in Southwest Georgia today.125
Equally critical to the narrative of the Albany Movement and its importance in the struggle for racial justice is a focus on the empowerment of such local students as Evelyn Toney, Julian Carswell, Robert Wilson, Bertha Gober, Blanton Hall, Bernice Johnson Reagon, and hundreds of other indigenous protesters. Bertha Gober’s impassioned speech at a mass meeting following her jailing captures the meaning of the movement for the many hundreds of local people who dared to challenge white supremacy in Albany, even at the risk of incarceration in rat-infested jails. As noted earlier, Gober spoke about how her time in jail was necessary to show people that human dignity must be obtained even if it required suffering.126 While Gober’s empowerment and personal triumph did not represent the kind of legislative or judicial accomplishment that was the major goal of the NAACP or the SCLC, it represented a vital victory for the local people of Albany in their struggle for self-empowerment and freedom.
The hundreds of Albany protesters mobilized not merely to prod the federal government to action but “to create new social identities for participants and for all Afro-Americans.”127 The mass protests emanated from a quest for self-determination as well as political or legal victories.128 In his autobiography, Standing Fast, Roy Wilkins, commenting on the skillful tactics of Sheriff Pritchett and the failure of the Albany Movement to win a major political or legal victory to end segregation, observed that direct action in Albany “had suddenly come up against a hard, unmoving rock. If the entire South had been as deft and devious as Albany in avoiding integration, we would have been in very serious trouble. As it was, the situation in Albany affirmed more than ever my own belief that we would gain our goals only when the White House and Congress, as well as the Supreme Court, were all acting on our side.” 129
Wilkins, however, failed to acknowledge the goals of local people and SNCC activists—the “feeling of decency and self-respect” reflected by Bertha Gober; the “real chance to fight and to struggle and not respect boundaries that put [her] down” expressed by Bernice Johnson Reagon; and the victory in the “psychological battle for the minds of the enslaved” described by Charles Sherrod. Out of the Albany Movement protests “emerged a black consciousness and solidarity” that went beyond any specific goal that may have been the aim of national civil rights organizations.130
Hollowell correctly observed that too many people overlooked the lesson of the movement: that a deeper and more sustaining process was taking place, and masses of long-intimidated blacks were on the rise.131 Similarly, many people also overlooked Hollowell and C. B. King’s crucial work in the Albany Movement. Hollowell himself was seldom forthcoming about his personal feelings, especially in relation to his own contributions or achievements. However, on the occasion of C. B. King’s burial, in a rare instance he expressed his innermost feelings to Howard Moore, C. B. King’s son, and others regarding his and C. B. King’s work in the Albany Movement. Hollowell observed in a plaintive voice, “No one knows how hard we worked.” Moore recalled, “The tone and depth of feeling with which Hollowell spoke revealed the pain and anguish he felt. It left me fighting back tears.”132
This chapter offers a glimpse of Hollowell and C. B. King’s moral and legal support of hundreds of jailed protesters, their collaboration with Albany Movement leaders and civil rights organizations, and their ongoing negotiations with city officials. Nevertheless, many untold stories remain about their work—work that often provided the impetus for demonstrators to persevere in the struggle and the inspiration for others to join the movement.