Skip to main content

WALB newsfilm clip of African Americans arrested for participating in a night march, Albany, Georgia, 1962 July 21

View
@ Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

WALB (Television station : Albany, Ga.)

Description

In this silent WALB newsfilm clip from the evening of July 21, 1962, police arrest African Americans participating in a night march in downtown Albany, Georgia. The marchers, many dressed in white, walk two abreast, flanked by two reporters with notepads. Police meet the demonstrators downtown where Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett speaks to the crowd through a bullhorn. Georgia state troopers stand in a line, apparently blocking traffic from the street; city officials relied on the assistance of troopers during many of the marches. Police stand by and watch as Reverend Samuel B. "Benny" Wells leads the demonstrators in prayer; as he prays, they kneel or sit on the sidewalk. Next, the marchers sing and clap their hands in an alley, most likely in "Freedom Alley," a dead-end street beside City Hall where arrested civil rights protesters often waited for booking. The clip ends with policemen standing in the street near a movie theater in Albany. On July 21, Albany city officials had obtained a federal injunction against local and national leaders restraining them from leading marches and other demonstrations. At a scheduled mass meeting held that evening at Shiloh Baptist Church, Reverend Wells, who was not named in the injunction, volunteered to lead a march. Over one hundred people followed him downtown and were arrested; another fifty marched later that night and joined those already in jail. The night march on July 21 was one of the last night marches held in Albany. After violence erupted in response...

Record Contributed By

Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia