More Commentary on Chapter 3

I did not quite finish my commentary on Chapter 3 yesterday (Tues. 2/24), so below is the remainder of what I planned to say. This will bring us up to Chapter 4 of Sitkoff's book, which is where we will start tomorrow.


P. It was SNCC that involved King in the Albany, Georgia campaign which did not succeed, despite how thoroughly segregated Albany was and the substantial local support they had. Chief of Police, Laurie Pritchett, outsmarted them by keeping his handling of the protests low-key, and even bailing King out of jail on one occasion so he would not draw too much critical attention. Pritchett even read King's book on Montgomery and some of Gandhi's essays.

1. But the SNCC students resented King for coming in and stealing the spotlight and agreeing to a deal which fell through and left segregation pretty much untouched. They began to refer to him as "De Lawd."

2. SNCC blasted King for agreeing to abide by an injunction against protests handed down by a federal judge (a segregationist who had been appointed by Kennedy). King realized he needed the federal government on his side and he did not want to piss them off. But the students regarded him as a "bougeois coward."

a.) After the injunction was lifted, King promised to lead a march, but 2,000 angry Albany blacks beat him to it -- they threw stones and bottles at the police. King went out afterward to urge them not to resort to violence.

3. King left Albany with not a whole lot to show for his efforts, with the possible exception of the new courage and self-respect among the black folk of Albany.

Q. What went wrong? Reasons for the failure of Albany:

1. Pritchett's skillful opposition.

2. Unity of white segregationists -- and how they used the black middle class (who had something to lose) to question King's tactics and besmirch his reputation.

3. Internal dissension between NAACP, SNCC, King.

4. King pointed to an overly broad list of grievances and demands -- need to target one aspect of segregation. And in this context King said they made a mistake in attacking the political power structure instead of the economic -- they had no leverage with politicians in terms of votes.

R. Then there was also the unwillingness of the Kennedy administration to get involved.

1. The JFK administration preferred public order over racial justice. Robert Kennedy actually phoned the mayor to congratulate him on the orderly manner of arrests and maintaining peace.

2. King criticized the FBI for siding with Albany segregationists. The FBI was quick to target blacks for wrong-doing but not white police officers for brutality. (Hoover, the FBI, refused to investigate police brutality cases. They were reluctantly dragged into the murder case in Mississippi -- the subject of the film "Mississippi Burning," which falsely portrays how they got involved.)

a.) King's public criticism of the FBI led Hoover to redouble his efforts to discredit King -- sending memos to Robert Kennedy about his association with Levison and how Levison was a dupe of the Soviets (for which they had no proof).



That brings us to Chapter 4. I'll have your papers back tomorrow and we'll have our first two textual commentaries.