Video Segment

Eyes on the Prize, Volume 165, Chapter 2

Table of Contents

Summary
Questions for Discussion
Activities
Keywords
Profiles
Organizations
Maps
Graphs
Primary Documents

Summary

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was a student civil rights group that grew out of the sit-in movement. In the spring of 1961, SNCC workers arrived in Albany, Georgia, to organize local African-Americans to fight against segregation there.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was invited to the city to give a speech after more than five hundred demonstrators had been arrested. King joined the demonstration and was himself arrested. But protesters did not encounter the police brutality they expected: Police Chief Laurie Pritchett had studied the nonviolent approach and was determined to avoid news-making confrontations.

When a federal court banned further demonstrations, King left Albany, realizing there would be no clear-cut victories. SNCC organizers remained in the city.

Questions for Discussion

1. How did Dr. Anderson and other local organizers plan to bring about change in Albany, Georgia? How did Martin Luther King, Jr., figure in their strategy? Why did some people initially object to inviting King to Albany?

2. In Albany, King said, "The most potent weapon available to oppressed people as they struggle for freedom and justice is the weapon of nonviolence." Why didn't the nonviolent approach work in Albany?

3. What were the outcomes of the Albany movement? Which strategies were successful? Which were not? Why? What do you think the civil rights organizers learned from the Albany movement?

Activities

Music played a vital role in the movement. Ask students to select one of the "Freedom Songs" used in the Albany segment and turn it into a rap song. Have them make up other rap songs based on this segment. Ask them to discuss how music helped strengthen and unify both students and adults at times of great danger and during lighter moments.

Albany's chief of police tried to checkmate the movement at every turn. Ask students to imagine they are residents of a Southern town in the 1960s and demonstrations are taking place there. What would they do if they were chief of police? A city official? A member of the chamber of commerce?

Keywords

• mass meetings
• nonviolence
• segregation
• Freedom Riders

Online Profiles

• Ella Baker
• John F. Kennedy
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Bernice Johnson Reagon
• Wyatt Tee Walker

Organization Descriptions

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• Congress of Racial Equality
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Maps

• United States. In 1950 the population of the United States was 134,941,622 White and 15,042,692 Black (approximately 9.5 percent of the population).
• Georgia (three frames). Capital: Atlanta. Population in 1960 (note that the laser disc shows 1950 data): 2,817,223 White and 1,122,596 Black. Principal Goods and Crops: textiles, lumber, processed foods, fertilizer; cotton, tobacco, peanuts, pecans and peaches.

Graphs

• Black Elected Officials
• Family Income
• Unemployment Rates
• "Cycle of Inequality"
• Per-Pupil Expenditures

Primary Documents

• Plessy Decision Document

Bibliography

See Eyes on the Prize Bibliography

 

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