After the thrill of the election news wore off, I started thinking about the past and how this Election Night fit into the narrative of our country.
Albany, Georgia, 1961. A black field hand named Charlie Ware flirted with the black mistress of the white overseer of the plantation Ware worked on. The overseer complained to the Sheriff. The Sheriff drove out to Charlie Ware's house, and, finding him not at home, beat Ware's wife until Ware came home. When Ware came home, the Sheriff beat Ware for a while, then arrested him and drove him to the jail. Parked outside the jail, with Ware handcuffed to the door, the Sheriff radioed that "This n*****'s coming at me with a knife", and shot Ware 3 times. Ware actually survived and an FBI agent interviewed him. The agent reported that Ware had done nothing to provoke the shooting, but a grand jury indicted Ware for felonious assault. Several Black organizations tried to appeal the charge, but, Ware remained in jail, pending trial, for over a year.
Several Black civil rights organizations looked into the situation but decided that any kind of demonstration or march would do more harm than good. They did decide to try to negotiate with the authorities in Albany. These groups merged into what became known as the Albany Movement. Their efforts to negotiate with the authorities in Albany County went nowhere.
Meanwhile, Albany State College, a Black College, let its students out for Thanksgiving vacation.
From Taylor Branch's biography of MLK..."Because of the persistent rumors of race trouble, the Dean of students went ahead of them. He took up a post outside the station, from which he directed the herd of students toward the colored waiting room. All obeyed him except two, Blanton Hall and Bertha Gober. They broke away to go "cleanside", which was the local Negro slang for entering the white waiting room.
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A policeman quickly approached Hall and Gober in the line at the white ticket counter and said, "you'll never get your ticket there." The two students asked why, nervously and politely standing their ground. A detective laid the groundwork for arrest by advising them that their presence was "tending to create a disturbance," and when they still did not move from the line, Laurie Pritchett ordered them to jail."
The two students remained in jail for two nights but, more importantly, were suspended from school. This was very significant. Typically, the person going to college was the first in the family to get past grammar school. Paying for tuition and books and such was a joint effort of the family and the whole community, mainly through the Church. Getting kicked out of college was the equivalent of being condemned to work as a maid or maybe seamsteress or such for the rest of your life. There was no such thing as a second chance.
A couple of nights later the arrested students were invited to a prayer meeting at a local church. By this time 3 other students had also been arrested. The Minister asked them to tell their tale. Taylor Branch...
"One by one they spoke, with the last student to the pulpit being Bertha Gober, a diminutive young woman with the small voice of a child, She described the arrest, her jailers, the sordid details of her cell. "I felt it was necessary to show the people that human dignity must be obtained, even if through suffering or maltreatment," she said, "...I'd do it again anytime...After spending those two nights in jail for a worthy cause, I feel I have gained a feeling of decency and self-respect, a feeling of cleanliness that even the dirtiest walls of Albany's jail nor the actions of my institution cannot take away from me."
The trembling simplicity of her speech washed over the audience. "There was nothing left to say, Sherrod wrote. He and everyone else were reduced to tears, including the "hard, grown men."
47 years later, a black man is the President-Elect of the United States.
Is this a great country or what?