Question

What is your perspective of Dr. King's involvement in the Albany movement? How much credit do you feel Septima Clark deserves?

Answer 1

SOLUTION

KING'S INVOLVEMENT IN THE ALBANY MOVEMENT

TNhe story of the Albany movement begins with the student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC). One of their focuses was on voting rights, and in 1961 two SNCC activists came to Albany to hold a voter's registration drive. Albany has a strong history of supressing African American demogratic participation, so the campaign was certainly needed. The activists were Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon. They started organizing African American protestors in Albany, held workshops on non-violent tactics, and prepared the community fot the fight ahead. Their first real chance for action came on November 1 of 1962, when the national ban on segregation in interstate bus terminals was scheduled to go into effect. To ensure that it was enforsed, they held a sit in at a bus terminal, using nine volunteers from Albany state college.The first coordinated protest motivated other members of the community to Njoin in, and on November 7 the Albany Movement was officially inaugurated. Its original goal was the desegregation of travel facilities like bus stops, but the agenda quickly grew to envision an end to all forms of segregation in Albany.

The non-violence movement was based around the idea that if people saw African American's suffering without violently retailating, the nation would develop sympathy. So, the role of the media was important, and nobody better Nunderstood than the Dr. Martin Luthur King, jr. The Albany movement invited the king to join their protest, and he arrived in December of 1961, bringing the authority and resources of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with him. Since the Albany movement envisioned total desegregation, their tactics were diverse. Protestors held meetings, gave speeches, marched, held sit-ins and organized rallies. Of all the tactics, however, there was one that suprisingly effective, and that was singing. Singing, largely inspired by the role of music in Ancient American churches, proved to be an extremely effective way to galvanize protestors, keep energy and morale high, and present a very non-threatening form of non-violent protest.

SEPTIMA CLARK

Septima Clark was actually a black American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Septima's work was commonly under-appreciated by southern male activists. She became Known as the ''Queen mother'' or the ''Grandmother'' of the civil rights movement in the United States. Clark's argument for her position in the civil rights movement was one that claimed '' Knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality could'nt.

Martin Luthur King jr. commonly referred to clark as ''The mother of the movement''.