Encyclopedia article about the civil rights organization based in Albany, Georgia. According to traditional accounts the Albany Movement began in fall 1961 and ended in summer 1962. It was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community, and it resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000 African Americans in Albany and surrounding rural counties. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy came to Albany with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and were some of the demonstrators arrested. When told as a chapter in the history of the national civil rights movement, Albany was important because of King's involvement and because of the lessons he learned that he would soon apply in Birmingham, Alabama. It may also be viewed as a local movement with deep roots which creates a very different picture of the freedom struggle in the southwest corner of the state.

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Cite as: "Albany Movement," New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved [date]: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org.

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Forms part of the New Georgia Encyclopedia.