An episode in The Alabama Experience documentary series
This program was produced by Dwight Cammeron (dcammeron@cpt.ua.edu).
Program length: 25 minutes.
This program may also be shown in two shorter segments. Stop the tape at 13:22 into the program when you hear "something we had never had before of our own."
They called it "Bloody Lowndes," the rusty buckle of Alabama's black belt. In 1965, A full century after the War Between the States, things hadn't changed much: 86 white families owned 90 percent of the land in the county and controlled the government. Not a single black was registered to vote.
The success of the Selma March, though, encouraged civil rights leader to believe they could fight racism even in Bloody Lowndes. "The Lowndes County Freedom Organization" revisits this place where a new political party helped blacks stand up to murder and intimidation.
A young, dynamic leader named Stokely Carmichael and the organization he represented, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), launched an intensive effort to register blacks to vote in Lowndes County.
SNCC's plan was simple: get enough people to vote so blacks might control the local government. Carmichael and others organized registration drives, demonstrations and classes. They formed a political party and entered candidates in the races.
But it wasn't enough. The black candidates were defeated. The documentary shows that the people who struggled for their rights say there was a victory in 1966: that's the year poor and disenfranchised black Alabamians found the courage to create the Lowndes County Freedom Party.
1. Why had blacks not registered to vote in Lowndes County before 1966? (They had been required to pass a literacy test.)
2. Why did the Lowndes County Freedom Organization have to erect a tent city? (Because some white landowners evicted their black tenants when they registered to vote.)
3. Why did the people in Lowndes County decide to work with the Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee instead of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? (They thought SNCC would be more aggressive and would be more effective, considering the opposition in the area.)
4. Why did the civil rights struggle in Lowndes County focus on voter rights instead of access to public accommodations, as it had elsewhere? (Because the Voting Rights Act of 1966 had just been passed.)
1. Have your students explore the registration process in your area. How old must they be to vote? Where do they register? What forms do they have to fill out? Where do they vote? Perhaps there are older students in the school who have voted. They might tell about the procedure.
2. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had some fundamental differences. Have students research these two organizations, their leaders, and explain their philosophies.
3. After Lowndes County, Stokely Carmichael became a controversial figure in the Civil Rights Movement when he worked with the Black Panther party in Oakland. Have a student present a report on Stokely Carmichael.
4. Viola Liuzzo, a white woman from Detroit, was doing volunteer work for the Civil Rights movement when she was murdered in Alabama. Have a student prepare a brief biography on her life and death.
5. Have students present a report on the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Law Center in Montgomery. Whose idea was it? Who designed the fountain? Who are some of the people who are memorialized at this site? (Have your students look up stories about the memorial in old issues of the Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal to begin their research.)
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