Civil Rights Movement In Albany Essay

The city of Albany was heavily segregated and was on a collision course with the Civil Rights Movement. It was in Albany where Martin Luther King suffered one of his greatest defeats. The movement in Albany was started and organized by SNCC. After the federal mandate to end segregation in interstate travel, SNCC sent student protestors to bus stations to challenge local authorities. The initial strategy applied by SNCC was to put as much pressure on the authority in Albany until there was a clear direction to move toward. Overall, the movement lacked organization and sense of direction. The movement in Albany asked for Dr. King to come and assist their efforts. This was a double edged sword for the Albany movement because when Dr. King came to assist in places where it was needed, he brought organization and numbers with him; However, when he would have to leave to assist other cities throughout the South, organization would collapse.
The movement in Albany faced the resistance of Laurie Pritchett, the Chief of Police in Albany. He understood Dr. King’s strategy to fill the jails in order to prevent the police from making more arrests. Pritchett avoided sparking
I believe that without the leaders learning from these failures, they would not have succeeded as well as they did in other cities such as Birmingham and Washington. The lesson of non-violence provoking a violent backlash was crucial to have their voices hear not just locally, but nationally. Dr. King’s strategy of non-violence with the goal of causing violence, eventually allowed further action of the government to take a stand and giver African American’s the rights they have been yearning for. Exposing the injustice of segregation eventually allowed Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending discrimination based on race or color and giving all citizens within the United States equal