Waiting for Miracles

Wandering through what is called the Harlem section of Albany, Ga. (pop. 59,000), the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 33, paused to talk to clusters of Negroes on street corners, stepped gingerly into a poolroom and a tavern, visited a shoe shop here, a filling station there. He preached a theme that Albany's restless Negroes were finding harder and harder to accept: nonviolence in their drive to desegregate the town.

Only the night before, after 40 Negroes were arrested for trying to march on city hall, 2,000 Negroes took to the streets, throwing rocks and bottles at police and white crowds. In the back streets of Albany, King pleaded with his fellow Negroes and called for a day of penance to atone for their riot. Next day, after leading a prayer meeting outside city hall, King and nine others were thrown into jail, and for days afterward Albany teetered on the brink of riot.

Lost Fervor. By this time, King has discovered that Albany will not give way as easily as did Montgomery, Ala. during his famous 1956 bus boycott. Albany's dominant whites, politicians and businessmen alike, have so far refused Negro appeals to establish even a basis of communication between the two groups. Increasingly, Negroes, though still united in their aim, are being discouraged by a sense of failure: each protest march ends in jail. As much as the pleas of King, the presence of Police Chief Laurie Pritchett, 36, an intelligent officer who has dealt unemotionally and with dignity with the Negroes, has kept the activists among them from turning the town inside out.

Despite the eloquence with which he presents his Gandhian philosophy (see box), King himself has failed to convince Albany's Negroes. For one thing, many Negroes throughout the South suspect that too much success has drained him of the captivating fervor that made him famous. Says a Negro: "Martin comes in wearing his spiritual halo and blows on his flute and the money comes pouring in. But he doesn't even speak for the Baptist ministry, let alone 20 million Negroes."

Walking Shoes. Even martyrdom is something that King cannot always depend on. Fortnight ago, he chose to accept a 45-day jail sentence--rather than pay a $178 fine--for his role in an earlier Albany protest march. But hardly was he clapped behind bars when a man described by police as a "well-dressed Negro" paid the fine anyway; his benefactor was not identified, but the talk around Albany was that the whites themselves had paid the fine to keep King from becoming a more powerful rallying point. Some of Albany's Negroes somehow expected that King's mere presence in town would bring "freedom here and now," and were beginning to resist his exhortations to "put on your walking shoes" and continue the Gandhian protest marches. Said one discouraged Negro: "There is a limit to the number of people who feel the way to protest is to walk down Jackson Street into jail. Some of us think we can do the job less wastefully."

In addition to opposition from such Negroe --who believe in forceful legal action--King is also under pressure from others who prefer to throw bricks rather than march to jail, and from Governor Ernest Vandiver, who has threatened to call out the National Guard if King continues to 'stir up" Albany's Negro population. So prosperous is Albany (from new industry and $23 million in payrolls from nearby military installations) that threats of boycotts are unlikely to move the town to improve the Negro's status. "We don't need the Negroes, really," says one businessman. "Albany's doing right well by itself." Martin Luther King continues to counsel patience: "After all, it took Gandhi 40 years to achieve independence. We cannot expect miracles here in Albany."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.