by Bob Zellner
There was a mass meeting at Shiloh Church that evening, and an estimated two hundred people attended—some who had witnessed our arrest, and relatives and friends. The songs were reportedly incredible and we realized later that the Shiloh meeting was part of the recognition of Albany as a lasting monument of freedom music and singing. We missed it all, because we were downtown being fingerprinted and charged with disorderly conduct, obstructing the flow of traffic, and failure to obey an officer, before being processed into Pritchett’s jail. I would become well-acquainted with a variety of Albany detention facilities over the next few months.
We had not been disorderly, we had not obstructed the flow of traffic, and we had not failed to obey an officer. We used an interstate transportation facility as the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling intended—in a nondiscriminatory manner. The grudging new ruling had been purchased in Birmingham and Montgomery with a lot of blood and suffering amid burned buses and broken heads. The federal order integrating interstate facilities, ironically, had to be wrung from a reluctant John F. Kennedy and his supposedly tough attorney general brother Bobby. JFK had been elected because large numbers of black voters, mostly in the North, had left the party of Lincoln for the Democrats in the 1960 election. We in SNCC were willing to concede that his little brother might be tough on aging communists and certain labor leaders, but he was not tough on Southern racists. To the Kennedy administration, the recently promulgated ICC rules of the road were for international consumption only; they were tools in the cold war, not weapons for the fight for democracy in the Old South.
President Kennedy had protected his Democratic hindquarters in the South by appointing known racists as federal judges. His first appointment was one of the more egregious examples, that of Harold Cox, former college roommate of Mississippi Senator James Eastland, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Eastland had told Bobby Kennedy that if JFK would give Cox a federal judgeship, then Kennedy could have Eastland’s vote to confirm Thurgood Marshall’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. On the bench, Cox was a disaster. He once referred to some black witnesses as a “bunch of chimpanzees,” and he routinely said “nigger” in open court. His rulings, unsurprisingly, often failed to enforce civil rights and Constitutional protections.
Police Chief Laurie Pritchett and those who ruled Albany, Georgia, and environs, did not intend to charge us with violating their segregation laws, just their Southern sense of order. Segregation laws could be challenged with the nominal support of the U.S. Justice Department. Maintaining law and order, however, was a local matter, allowing President Kennedy to congratulate his friend James Gray, owner of the Albany Herald, on the fine job of law enforcement being done in southwest Georgia. Gray was a racist carpetbagger from Massachusetts, who had married into Southern money and power.
The threads connecting past, present, and future were becoming apparent. The freedom rides of the spring, (where I had observed the aftermath of the Montgomery massacre with the Durrs, writer Jessica Mitford, and my Huntingdon college mates) had resulted in the ICC ruling that the Albany students, and now, we, were testing. The ruling had taken effect on November 1. In Albany our organizers had managed, in only two months, to construct a movement powerful enough to capture the imagination of the nation and the world; these SNCC operatives were veterans of the bloody freedom rides. The Albany movement would become the model for later upheavals in the South such as Birmingham and Danville, Virginia. Another thread connecting Albany to the past was the similarity to the federal reaction in the freedom rides.
The bargain that the Kennedy brothers struck with the governor of Mississippi was that the freedom riders would not be killed (as they expected to be) when they got off the bus in Jackson. This would avoid the black eyes that America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, was sustaining throughout the “un-free” world. How could the United States lead the free world with apartheid so visible in the American South?
In exchange, then, for sparing the lives of the integrated interstate travelers, the state of Mississippi could quietly arrest the freedom riders, trucking them directly to Parchman Prison farm in notorious Sunflower County, home of James Eastland, where they could be punished out of sight of the world press. Never mind that the state was enforcing unconstitutional segregation laws.
The deal that covered Albany was made during the 1960 presidential campaign when Governor Ernest “No, Not One” Vandiver gave his support to Kennedy in exchange for a promise that Kennedy would never send federal forces to enforce desegregation. As long as Chief Pritchett and his law didn’t “brutalize” the demonstrators, at least not in public, he could do violence to citizens’ democratic rights to his heart’s content. The federal government would not interfere. At the end of the first phase of the movement in Albany when Martin King bailed out of jail—and bailed out of Albany contrary to his pledge to share Christmas dinner with the hundreds of movement prisoners—Mayor Asa Kelly announced that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had called within the hour of that afternoon’s truce to congratulate the city “for preventing an outbreak of violence.”
While being fingerprinted and mug-shot for Mayor Kelly’s jail house rogue’s gallery, I thought about the propensity Southerners have for displaying sweetness in the daylight while creating hell in the cell. What would we find in the jails that were being prepared to receive us? The fat little cop who took my prints smirked while praising me for knowing the fingerprinting procedure. “You’ve done this before, ain’t you? I sure appreciate the way you roll that finger for me. People who ain’t done it before will oftentimes smudge the paper.” He grinned like a mule eating briars, “You done it right the first time.”
I didn’t say anything. At this point I didn’t have a lot of jail experience, but I remembered from our training workshops the danger of being too friendly with police. They often played variations of the good cop/bad cop routine to see what they could learn. The lawmen in Mississippi, I recalled, had alternated between threats and being just a good ol’ boy curious about how a nice Southern gentleman like myself got mixed up in “all this.” Another ploy I learned in McComb—a cop would whisper that another was a “bad ass,” telling me to come to him if there was trouble.
All jails are different. Now it was comforting to be with friends. In Mississippi I had been the only white person arrested and it was my first time in jail. I had been terrified in Mississippi, especially when my own lawyer said he was worried that I would not make it through the night. Here in Albany I had a chance to be the experienced one, telling Tom Hayden and Per Laursen what to expect. This happy state didn’t last, however; Tom bailed out to fulfill a speaking engagement for Students for a Democratic Society. Forman thought it was a good idea because Tom would spread the word about Albany the way he had with the campaign in Mississippi when he wrote a pamphlet called “Revolution in Mississippi.”
I supported Tom’s leaving because I had recently been asked to serve on the SDS national executive committee and I wanted closer ties between the organizations. SDS could help focus national attention on our work in the deep South, and SNCC could continue to inspire northern students to revolt and organize. Publicity would help us raise much-needed money.
Per stayed in long enough to see how it was so he could write about Southern jails, and he and Joan Browning were bailed out late Monday in time to attend a mass meeting. I decided to honor SNCC’s policy of jail, no bail. If I believed in the principle of noncooperation with evil, it didn’t make sense to court arrest and then get out on bail as soon as possible. Besides, if the ruling class of Albany and its hired hands, the police, cooperated, it would be possible to organize the first mass jail-in of the rural South. I would remain in jail for a while.
After arraignment I was placed in a large cell block with the general white prison population. One of the first things you learn about jails is that they are run by the inmates, not the authorities. Another thing that seems more
or less constant is that there is usually one prisoner who is the leader or boss of the jail—not always the strongest or toughest one, either. Usually it is a man who is intelligent, serving a long sentence or sentences for a nonviolent crime.
In the Albany jail the leader was a slender man named Shug. He reminded me of a cross between Popeye and Art Carney playing Norton on “The Honeymooners.” He talked out of the left side of his mouth and had a disconcerting habit of looking slightly past your head as he talked, like he was watching someone behind you. A three-time loser, the man was a safe-cracker and proud of the fact that he made his living with his brain, not his brawn.
Shug took to me right away. I had expected hostility from the white inmates, most of them Southern. Surprisingly there was not much recognizable anger directed towards me. I found out that Mr. Shug—that’s what all newcomers were told to call him—had interceded in my behalf. Mr. Shug had been pointed out to us while Tom and Per were still in with me. Not long after they left, Shug, eased over toward me holding out a cigarette—a high compliment from anybody in jail, where the two most common drugs, alcohol and tobacco, are worth more than money.
This particular Lucky Strike was even more of an honor, coming from the Man himself. Shug wanted to know how much money I was making in my line of work. He had always been confident, he told me in a whisper, that he was the smartest guy in the jail. Incarcerated for years, he knew the men inside out, especially the long-timers. Now he claimed he was not so sure he was the most intelligent man in that jail. Listening to me talk, he said he could tell two things. One, I was educated, and two, he was pretty sure I was a Southerner. That was what made him ask about my salary.
“You must make an awful lot of money.”
“No, not really.”
“Well,” Shug said, “what do you call not a lot? It may sound like an awful lot to us poor sons of bitches in here.”
I told Shug it would not sound like a lot to him or anybody else in the jail. People are often surprised, I said, to find out how little we can get by on.
“I bet,” Shug said. “Look, I’m a safe-cracker, and pretty good at it. That’s how come I run things around here. Guys in here could tear my head off, but they’re not as smart as me. That’s why they let me be in charge.”
I could see he was desperate to clear up a puzzle for himself. To change the subject and also because I was curious, I asked him about an old man who walked about the cell block all day in a shuffle, always the same rate of walk, never taking a step longer than six inches. Shug said you could always tell a man who had spent a lot of time on the old chain gangs. “That man was on the chain for more than thirty-five years, he went in as a teenager for murder and he’ll never take another step in any other way than that, six inches at a time. That man was shackled day and night for almost forty years. He’s still shackled to that chain, only now you can’t see it.”
Now he tried another tack. “I know it doesn’t look like I’m any good at robbing safes, what with me being in here and all, but you would be surprised if I told you how much money I’ve handled in my life—the times I’m not in here, you know. Like I say, I’ve been very successful at different times, but I bet I’ve never even dreamed of the money you are making, doing what you are doing. Am I right?”
When I told him again that I barely made enough to get by on, he seemed to get exasperated. “Look, Bob, is it okay if I call you that . . .? You don’t have to tell everyone else in here. Just tell me in confidence. I won’t tell nobody. This is one professional to another. Now how much is it, if you don’t mind? You got to be making millions. No person in his right mind would do what I’ve heard you are doing if they weren’t making millions.”
It looked like I had to tell him, so I said that I made exactly what every other SNCC field secretary makes, ten dollars a week.
“I understand,” Shug whispered, “that you have to put out that cock-and-bull story for mass consumption, Bob. But this is Shug you are taking to. You don’t expect me to buy such a story. You got to be making more than me, that’s what’s driving me crazy. How much is it worth to do what you are doing? It don’t make sense. You could get killed. These guys in here would beat the shit out of you except I’ve told them you are making a killing. Hell, now they are not even mad at you. But I got to know how much you are making. I don’t even have to know where it is coming from. If it is Moscow gold, that’s your business, but don’t hand me this ten-dollars-a-week business. Bob, don’t insult my intelligence, please!”
I assured Shug that I was a member of SNCC out of conviction and I believed that segregation was bad for people. Black people and white people.
“You can get convicted,” Shug said, “and I’m not going to let you off the hook. I’ll just keep trying till I find out how much money you’re making. Then I’ll know whether or not it’ll be worthwhile changing my line of work.
In the following days and weeks Shug kept talking to me. He said he was still trying to figure out if he was the smartest one in that jail. The more I professed to make ten dollars a week, the more Shug figured I was making millions.
On the first Saturday night in the joint a controversy broke out about whether I should get an allotted share of the hooch that was brewed weekly in our cell block. The prisoner cooks, trustys, would “steal” corn meal and raisins from the pantry, add a little sugar and copious amounts of warm water, and let it ferment into a reasonable facsimile of beer. A five-gallon bucket served as a vat. All week each prisoner would listen to its gurgle and fizz while the aroma promised a Saturday night break in the deadly monotony. One glass of that green, warm homebrew and no inmate need worry about irregularity. It would go through you, Shug grinned, “like grease through a goose.”
Shug settled any argument by explaining that everybody got his share as long as he obeys his rules. “Bob here, obeys my rules like everybody else, so he gets his share. Anybody don’t like it, take it up with me.”
December days were passing, and I heard that Dr. King was leading a prayer march on the 16th. He was arrested along with 250 demonstrators, and I thought—not bad to spend Christmas in jail with Martin Luther King Jr. But he was released on bail as part of a settlement with Albany officials, and I spent a sad holiday, enhanced by missing a big New Year’s Eve celebration.
I was supposed to go to New York for a party at Harry Belafonte’s house, and the great singer Lena Horne was going to be there. I was to talk about Albany and McComb, and I was very excited about it all. I had been to New York only once, when I graduated from high school. In SNCC, we never knew when fame might be burnished by missing events because of untimely arrests. People at Belafonte’s party could have talked about the fact that Zellner “was missing in action.”
After the first go-round in Albany, in February 1962 I got a taste of prison Louisiana-style. Chuck McDew and I were charged with criminal anarchy and stayed in jail there until early March. I then came back to Albany for trial in city court. Charles Sherrod was sitting in the white section with Tom and Casey Hayden and me. The deputies smacked him across the face and dragged him to the back of the courtroom to the colored section, so naturally the Haydens and I and a couple of the other white defendants got up and joined Sherrod in the black section. Then we were all dragged out of the courtroom and slammed roughly into an elevator where the bailiffs and the cops proceeded to kick our asses good. My jail life changed dramatically after that because we were all convicted. Most of the freedom riders bailed out to await the appeals process, especially since we were sentenced to hard labor. It was March by now and starting to heat up, so working on a Georgia road gang did not appeal to anyone. I had never served time on a chain gang before so I decided to begin serving my sentence. There would be time later to bail out so my conviction could be appealed.
I learned that jail conditions, not very accommodating before, deteriorated dramatically after conviction. Before, we were “technic
ally” innocent. Now that I was definitely guilty of violating the sacred laws of Georgia, I was remanded to the custody of the High Sheriff for punishment. This consisted of being thrown into a dark cell with a dirt floor where the only light filtered under the large wooden door or down from a naked light bulb twenty feet off the ground. The “cell” measured no more than about eight feet by ten feet and housed between twelve and fifteen men. This seemingly impossible feat was accomplished by stacking the beds against opposite walls, six bunks high. The high-status criminals occupied the top-most bunks because it was quieter way up there, and the only way to get to one’s bunk was to use the lower bunks as a ladder. The single electrical cord in the top of the cramped cell also served as a way to heat up a cup of instant coffee, tea or soup. Inmate electricians rigged a tin Prince Albert tobacco can as a heating element. The can was split in two and held apart by rubber cut from an inner tube. The pieces of metal were hooked to the bare copper wires of the light cord. When lowered into a mug of water, electricity arced between the halves, bringing the liquid to a boil. Add instant coffee, tea, or split pea soup, and voila!—it’s what’s for dinner. When cooking was going on, our cubicle was dark except for an occasional match lighting a cigarette or sparks from the cooker. At night, after a hard day on the road it was easy to see who ranked at the bottom of the pecking order: me. I reached the electrode last; if I could stay awake that long.