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WW in 1961

746 jailed in Georgia for demanding justice

Published Jan 27, 2008 8:58 PM

Editor’s note: Workers World is in its 50th year of publication. Throughout the year, we intend to share with our readers some of the paper’s content over the past half century. Here are two articles originally published in Volume 3. The first appeared in the issue dated Dec. 22, 1961. The second, written right after the Kennedy administration’s Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, appeared in the issue dated April 28, 1961.

In the week ending Dec. 16, [1961,] no less than 746 Afro-American citizens of Georgia were arrested and jailed for peacefully demanding the rights which the United States Constitution has explicitly claimed they had for the last 94 years.

The specific charge against most of them was “unlawful assembly.” (The right of assembly is also guaranteed by the Constitution.)

A series of demonstrations began in Albany, Ga., on Dec. 12 when a trial of 11 sit-in youths was being held. On that day, 400 to 500 Afro-Americans marched up and down in front of the City Hall, praying and singing in a driving rain.

Several of the leaders of this group were arrested. One was given five days in jail on a charge of “contempt of court.”

Later in the same day, hundreds marched in protest against this outrage and this time 205 were arrested including children as young as 10 and 11 years old.

After this, the demonstrations snowballed. And when 565 had been arrested in three days of protests, Dr. Martin Luther King and Mrs. Ruby Hurley (Southeastern Secretary of the NAACP) arrived on the scene and tried to negotiate a truce with the white supremacists.

All that the King negotiators seem to have asked for was a pledge that the police stop enforcing segregation in the city’s rail and bus terminals, and release the hundreds of Afro-Americans being held in jail.

But racist Mayor Kelly and his racist Board of Commissioners broke off negotiations after a few hours and defied the Black community to do anything about it.

After waiting several hours, hoping for a possible change of mind from the mayor’s group, and still making one more attempt to see the mayor, a new demonstration was held—peaceful, as before.

This time, according to the New York Times: “The 70-man police force, sheriff’s deputies and State Highway patrolmen armed with pistols and nightsticks, stood on the alert at City Hall. About 150 National Guardsmen were held in readiness at the armory. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation cruised the streets in cars.”

With all this national, state and city “protection,” there were 150 more Afro-Americans arrested, including Dr. King.

Meantime, the Supreme Court refused to rule on the constitutionality of the previous arrests of sit-in youth.

Meantime, [President] John F. Kennedy was down in Venezuela making speeches about injustice and inequality in that country and how he was going to end it.

Meantime, [Attorney General] Robert F. Kennedy, who John appointed, presumably to enforce the U.S. Constitution, was busy prosecuting one of the few political groups that are honestly opposed to segregation—the Communist Party. (This Kennedy is top boss of the FBI—above J. Edgar Hoover—and it was his men who were “cruising the streets in cars” and watching innocent Black people being molested and arrested by the criminal cops of Georgia.)

Whole world calls U.S. aggressor; Kennedy gets set to do it again

The whole world, including even the capitalist allies of the United States, was appalled at the open attack on tiny Cuba which U.S. officials engineered on April 17. And yet Kennedy had the nerve to make his “blood and iron” speech after the fiasco, in which he spoke of the danger to U.S. “security” and of the “tyranny” in Cuba.

The Manchester Guardian of England summed up much of foreign Big Business sentiment when it said:

“Everyone knows that the sort of invasion by proxy with which the U.S. has now been charged is morally indistinguishable from open aggression.”

Of course the reason for such “moral” indignation is to be found in the great working class demonstrations that were held throughout the world, particularly in Latin America. Over 25,000 marched in Mexico City alone.

But Kennedy, representing the arrogant and still unchastened American capitalist class, made his war-mongering speech on the very morrow of the invasion’s failure, and furiously warned the oppressed Latin American countries as follows:

“If the nations of this hemisphere should fail to meet their commitments against outside penetration ... this government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligation.”

By this, Kennedy meant that if he could not get enough stooges among the Latin Americans to attack Cuba, he would see that the United States did so this time with sufficient planes and bombs—and Marines.

The truth is—that Cuba does indeed pose a threat to the United States. Not to the vast majority of the people of the United States, and not to the military security of the United States. But by its example to Latin America, it poses a threat to the Wall Street domination and exploitation of 230 million people in the hemisphere outside of the United States.

Most of the 180 million people in the United States itself do not even know that this super-exploitation exists. And many imagine that the 6 million Cubans are going to start attacking the United States with “Russian weapons.”

But the Latin Americans are very well aware of the nature and identity of their oppressor. Their revolution against that oppressor will not be defeated, nor even postponed, by Kennedy’s coming adventure in Cuba.