Albany Civil Rights Museum
By SHERRI SMITH BROWN
Georgia > Southwest Georgia > Dougherty County > Albany
Albany was a major battleground in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and that story is told at the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum at Old Mt. Zion Church.
Nationally noted as a key civil rights battleground of the early 1960s, Albany was one of the first cities where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the four major civil rights organizations – Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Committee on Racial Equality (CORE), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – joined forces.
The Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum at Old Mt. Zion Church, operated by the Albany Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), tells the compelling story of the Civil Rights Movement in Albany. The Albany Movement was an organization formed in 1961 to coordinate civil rights movement activities in the area. The group chose Mt. Zion Church as the site of their first mass meeting. A majestic church at the corner of Whitney Avenue and Jefferson Street, Mt. Zion Church had been built in 1906 by a congregation of former slaves, who had organized at the end of the Civil War. Mt. Zion Church continued to host the Albany Movement’s mass meetings, such as those in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to capacity crowds.
Because of its prominent place in the history of the Albany Movement, the old Mt. Zion Church building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, provides a perfect setting for a museum commemorating those events.
A 12,315-square-foot expansion adjacent to the historic Old Mt. Zion Church is packed with exhibits, a digital oral history database and resource library, music archives complete with listening and recording equipment, and state-of-the-art audio and visual technology. ACRI’s archives include hundreds of books, CD’s, DVD’s, magazines, newspaper catalogs, and clippings from local national and international sources. The Oral History Resource Center is a multimedia-equipped computer lab designed for public use to view and hear the recorded stories of the Albany Civil Rights Movement and other Civil Rights Movements in surrounding Southwest Georgia counties by actual participants.
Visit the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum at Old Mt. Zion Church on the second Saturday of the month and you will have the opportunity to hear the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum Freedom Singers. Led by one of the original members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, Ms. Rutha Harris, the group performs a mix of movement songs and black gospel hymns. These special songs provided heart, soul and courage to the Movement.
Read more about Georgia’s African American History, Albany and Dougherty County, and find more activities in the Southwest Georgia Travel Region here at Brown’s Guides.
Tags: African American History, Albany, Civil Rights, Martin Luther King Jr, museum