Albany Movement - Campaign

Campaign

Voter registration drives, petitions, and other civil rights related activity had been ongoing in Albany for decades. However, a new phase of the campaign began with the arrival of three young SNCC activists, Charles Sherrod, Cordell Reagon, and Charles Jones. The three helped encourage and coordinate black activism in the city, culminating in the founding of the Albany Movement as a formal coalition. It quickly became a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city. Bus stations, libraries, and lunch counters reserved for White Americans were occupied by African Americans, boycotts were launched, and hundreds of protesters marched on City Hall.

The Albany police chief, Laurie Pritchett, carefully studied the movement's strategy and developed a strategy he hoped could subvert it. He used mass arrests but avoided the kind of violent incidents that might backfire by attracting national publicity. Pritchett arranged to disperse the prisoners to county jails all over southwest Georgia to prevent his jail from filling up. The Birmingham Post-Herald stated that "The manner in which Albany's chief of police has enforced the law and maintained order has won the admiration of... thousands."