Comm; Miscellaneous; Freedom in the air : A documentary on Albany, Georgia.
- Collection
- Comm
- Series
- Miscellaneous
- Producing Organization
- WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
- Contributing Organization
- WNYC (New York, New York)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/80-27zkhj6m
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- Description
- Episode Description
- FREEDOM IN THE AIR A documentary on ALBANY. GEORGIA featuring "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest" Rev. Ben Gay ORIGINAL IDEA & FIELD WORK - GUY CARAWAN PRODUCED BY ALAN LOMAX & GUY CARAWAN STUDENT NON-VIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE SNCC-101 1961 1962 FREEDOM IN THE AIR : a documentary on ALBANY, GEORGIA 1961-2 Original Idea and Field Work - Guy Carawan Produced by Alan Lomax and Guy Carawan About Albany, Georgia Excerpts from the Southern Regional Council Report on Albany by Howard Zinn In the days before the Civil War Albany was the trading center for the slave plantations of South West Georgia. Today it is still the commercial center for this Black Belt area. Before World War II Negroes constituted a majority of the population. Today they constitute 42% 23,000 Negroes out of a total of 56,000. Two weeks before Christmas, 1961, 737 persons college students, professionals, working people, and children marched, prayed, sang, and went to jail to try to force open doors shut tight to Negroes since the city was founded in the days of slavery. Into that week of protest and excitement was compressed every major issue debated today in the changing South: the enforcement of national law by local authorities hostile to that law; the absence of communication between whites and Negroes living close together in a small southern city; the ambitions of local politicians; factionalism in Negro leadership; monopoly of the press and television; charges of "outside" agitation and "subversive" influence; the peculiar operations of local justice; jailhouse brutality. Intertwined with these were other elements: the remarkable role played by a handful of young people, already veterans of several prisons, devoted to a philosophy of non-violence in an atmosphere of police repressions; the participation of a few young southern whites, trying to pay with personal sacrifice the debt of their ancestors for ten generations, the awkward cautiousness of a national administration. Events in Albany were caused by the city's violation of the Interstate Commerce Commission's regulation. The Federal Government took no apparent action to curb that violation, although it undoubtedly has power to enforce its own orders. Today in Albany the I.C.C. order is being complied with. It was enforced, not by federal authority, but by demonstrations in the streets. Over 700 local Negroes and a few sympathetic whites spent time in prison as a mass substitute for federal action to compel recognition of a legal right. They were not opposed by the white people in Albany, but by local law enforcement officers. These officers acted, not out of malice, but out of a too-faint comprehension of the changes which are rolling slowly, but inevitably, through the South today, and which with McComb and Jackson, both in Mississippi and into the heart of the Black Belt. As in other cases, a movement born of specific grievances was nurtured in crisis and developed larger objectives, those of full equality and untarnished human dignity. About this Record and its Documentors Written by Lewis W. Jones, Sociological Consultant, Department of Race Relations, Fisk University In FREEDOM IN THE AIR the people of Albany, Georgia struggling to desegregate their community sing and speak their sentiments in an unusual document. The songs indicate how the old and the new generations have articulated their feelings in expression of protest, determination and hope. The slow-moving "long-meter" hymns sing the patience and persistence of older people in innuendo used long ago when they dared not speak out. Defiance of young people is sharply worded and sung often to contemporary gospel and rock and roll tunes. The movement to end segregation has bridged the cleavage between the generations and each generation in its own voice affirms a common purpose. The people hear their leaders speak as well as sing. The classic old sermon, "As the Eagle Stirreth Her Nest" is preached with new social content that applies to Albany, Georgia. A real estate man states the social issues with eloquent logic. The voices of the student organizers ring out with passion and impatience. Saying and singing as they do on this record the people of Albany strengthen their morale while telling their story to all who would hear. Guy Carawan and Alan Lomax have put the best of the saying and singing in a capsule of great impact. Guy's work in the South this last three years collecting folk music and singing for the civil rights struggle has put him in intimate contact with Negro communities and social changes that are taking place there. Equipped with training in sociology and folklore to help him interpret what he sees and hears in many situations that few white persons ever enter he is in a unique position to collect material and report what is happening in the South today. The Albany story is one such example. Alan Lomax, renowned collector and interpreter of American folk music has brought his skill and artistry as a documentary maker to Guy's aid and helped him shape his field recordings into a sociological document of high art. No place else can so finely focused insight into the cultural basis of the movement to desegregate the South be found. Anyone who listens to this recording will have the tones and quality of feeling in his ears when he reads a news story or studies one of the volumes written about the struggle being made in the South. Excerpt of a Letter from Alan Lomax to Guy Carawan in April of I960 . . . "While I was squirreling round in the past, you were busy with the present, and how I envy you. It must be wonderful to be with those kids who are so courageously changing the South forever. I hope they feel proud of the cultural heritage of their forbears. It was a heritage of protest against oppression', of assertion against hopelessness, of joy in life against death. Tell them that they can search the world over, all the libraries, all the manuscripts and they will never find a cultural heritage more noble, more vital, more flexible, more sophisticated, more wise, more full of love, more human or more beautiful. Tell them the whole world is shaken by hearing its faint echoes in jazz. Tell them that if they can walk into their free future with the great arts, the great laughter, the wit and the perceptiveness of life that their oppressed but always proud and life-enobled ancestors possessed and add to this their own sophistication, that the culture of the American Negro can become the wonder of the civilized world. Tell them that if they lose what is so close at hand, offered them by their fathers and mothers and grandmothers, that their children will have to turn back to it. If they can accept the folk of the south on their own terms they will build not only an invincible political movement but a bridge of beauty that all mankind will long to walk across. "But you know all this, and what's better you're doing something about it not just talking. Write and let me know how it goes. I admire you, because you are doing exactly what you ought to be doing." Yours affectionately, Alan About The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) In October of 1961 Charles Sherrod, Cordell Reagin and Charles Jones came to Albany as a team of SNCC representatives to help register Negro voters. SNCC was born out of the sit-in struggles of 1960 and staffed by a group of students who had experienced jailings in the sit-ins and beatings on the 1961 Freedom Rides. All of its members are veterans of desegregation campaigns that have taken place in various parts of the South this last couple of years. They are experienced in and dedicated to the ideas and techniques of non-violent protest. This includes such things as organizing non-violent demonstrations, economic withdrawal campaigns and voter registration drives. Today teams of SNCC members are working in parts of Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia, using their previous experience, energy and enthusiasm to help Negro communities give form and expression to their discontent. Such was the case in Alba
- Genres
- Documentary
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:00:00
- Credits
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Producer: Carawan, Guy
Producer: Lomax, Alan, 1915-2002
Producing Organization: WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
Record label: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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WNYC-FM
Identifier: 72222.1 (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: Vinyl recording: LP
Generation: Original
Duration: 00:00:00
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WNYC-FM
Identifier: 72222.2 (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Duration: 00:00:00
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WNYC-FM
Identifier: 72222.3 (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Duration: 00:00:00
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Comm; Miscellaneous; Freedom in the air : A documentary on Albany, Georgia.,” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed June 14, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-27zkhj6m.
- MLA: “Comm; Miscellaneous; Freedom in the air : A documentary on Albany, Georgia..” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. June 14, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-27zkhj6m>.
- APA: Comm; Miscellaneous; Freedom in the air : A documentary on Albany, Georgia.. Boston, MA: WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-27zkhj6m