JOANN CHRISTIAN MANTS: Former Albany Movement teen recalls March on Washington

EDITOR’S NOTE: These remarks were read during Albany’s 60th Anniversary of The March on Washington program on Saturday at Shiloh Baptist Church

My name is Joann Christian Mants; I am writing you from White Hall, between Selma and Montgomery, Ala., where I now live. But you should know I’m an Albany native who grew up on Holloway at Newton Road, near Six Points, where my entire family was active in the Albany Movement. By age 16, police had hauled me to jail 17 times. After one arrest, officers dragged and brutally beat me, as Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett looked on. Still, I have no regrets. It was the price of freedom — the cost of killing Jim Crow, who refused to let us vote, march, swim, dine freely, check out a library book, and wanted only to make relevant what was irrelevant: skin color.

By the time August ‘63 rolled around, many black Albanians desperately wanted to attend the March on Washington but lacked the means. That’s where civil rights foot soldiers like me came in. We traveled to places like suburban New York, appealing to people of good will and wealth, raising money so that folks back home could come to D.C. My sisters made it. So did my mother, who spent all night in front of the U.S. Justice Department protesting gross inequalities back in Albany. By the time the March had begun, exhaustion landed me in the hospital, where I watched most of the coverage from a stretcher.

Sixty years have passed, and while I’m proud of our sojourn and sacrifice, I worry that as a community, we’re resting on our laurels. The truth is, as fellow Albany Movement veteran and songwriter Bernice Johnson Reagon put it in one of her anthems, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest.” We’ve got to teach our children that they too must put their hands on the freedom plow, and push — and push hard in the name of self-respect. The struggle continues. We owe it to ourselves and each other. Now, let’s get to work.

Photo Courtesy of Joann Christian Mants