Large Albany crowd follows in the footsteps of civil rights leaders

ALBANY — The Rev. H.C. Boyd was winding down a stirring Martin Luther King Day message at Shiloh Baptist Church Monday afternoon when he broke into a wide grin.

“Look where the Lord has brought us from,” Boyd said.

A crowd of around 200 came to Shiloh to re-enact the marches that were a vital part of the Albany Civil Rights Movement, marches that started at the historic church and wound their way to the seats of power in downtown Albany, often ending with participants in jail. And the crowd came to pay tribute to the man who would become a martyr to the cause of civil rights in America.

“It’s time to straighten up your back,” Henry Mathis, who organized and narrated the march re-enactment, said as he read a King quote from a monument in Charles Sherrod Park. “The time has come for us to hold the leadership of our community accountable.”

Mathis said the principle idea behind the march was to “pass the torch” of the civil rights struggle to younger generations. The crowd at Shiloh included many veterans of the Albany Movement, city and county leaders, as well as a number of the event’s target audience.

“My granddad, Charles Williams, thought that it was important for me to come here today and support this event,” 15-year-old Dougherty High School student Brianna Mitchell said. “I think it’s important that we as the next generation learn as much as we can about this important part of our history.”

Community activist Tracy Taylor said his generation and others even younger must be prepared to accept the torch passed by those who fought the civil rights battles and continue the process of handing it down the line to successive generations.

“This is a very special event; it gives us insight into a piece of history that we’ve got to embrace and continue to pass down to the generations that come after,” Taylor said.

Glenn Lucas, meanwhile, said he’s part of a six-generation Albany family that finds commemorations of the Albany Movement particularly meaningful.

“These steps that we’re taking today are historic,” Lucas said. “We’re walking in the footsteps of the men and women who put their lives on the line so that we could have the freedom in this country that had been guaranteed by the constitution but hadn’t been given to us.”

Original Freedom Singer Rutha Harris led participants in a pre-walk song at Shiloh, then took up the familiar “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around” refrain from one of the movement’s most memorable songs as marchers walked three-abreast from Shiloh to Sherrod Park to the Oglethorpe Boulevard bus station to the site of the former downtown Albany jail.

“Today, we embody the spirit of those of yesterday who made this walk,” Mathis said. “Today we follow in the footsteps of Martin King, Ralph David Abernathy, Dr. William Anderson, Slater King, Carol King, C.B. King, the Gaines family, the Jenkins family. … Today, we walk the same walk and sing the same songs.”

Boyd, who has been pastor at Shiloh for 55 years, encouraged the crowd to continue the fight.

“Over the years I’ve been asked many times, ‘Are you satisfied?’” the pastor said. “The answer was no then, and it’s no now. When I came to Shiloh and Albany, I found a city that conflicted with its image. It was called the ‘Good Life City,’ but it wasn’t. I looked around and all of the police officers, all the city officials, all the tellers at the bank were white. I remember thinking, ‘There’s something wrong with this picture.’

“Of course, we’d all been told that, to survive, we should stay in our place. That’s why we were made to walk four miles to school, while whites rode buses, and when they’d pass us they’d throw spitballs at us and call us n…..s. That’s why, when I was traveling on a bus (for Army induction) to defend the American way of life, I had to stand while whites sat. But I’ve always held that troubles may come but they don’t stay. And I thank God for those struggles.”

The re-enactment ended downtown, where marchers, much as their forebears in the civil rights movement had before them, knelt and prayed.

The Rev. H.C. Boyd offers a fiery message from the pulpit at Shiloh Baptist Church Monday prior to the start of a march re-enactment that was part of Albany’s MLK Day celebration. (Staff Photo: Carlton Fletcher)

Around 200 participants gather at Charles Sherrod Park as part of the re-enactment of an Albany Civil Rights Movement march, held Monday in observance of MLK Day. (Staff Photo: Carlton Fletcher)