Stanford
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

To Robert F. Kennedy

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Southern Christian Leadership Conference); Anderson, William G. (Albany Movement); Forman, James (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

Date: July 23, 1962?

Location: Albany, Ga.?

Genre: Letter

Topic: Albany Movement

Details

King, Anderson, and James Forman of SNCC inform Attorney General Kennedy of the “inhumane treatment and unhealthy conditions” at Mitchell County Jail where twenty-one demonstrators were being held.1 Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall responded by stating that “the internal administration of a state penal institution is not a matter over which this Department would have any jurisdiction in the absence of an indication of a violation of federal law,” but he agreed to investigate whether there was such a violation.2

Hon. Robert F. Kennedy
U.S. Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Kennedy:

Strongly urge immediate investigation of inhumane treatment and unhealthy conditions at Mitchell County Jail at Camilla, Georgia. Peaceful demonstrators are political prisoners and committed to accept jail as a matter of conscience. We insist that jail conditions for any prisoner should conform to minimal standards of sanita­tion and decency. Will forward under separate cover specific conditions existing.3

Very truly yours
Martin Luther King, Jr.
SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)

W. G. Anderson
Albany Movement

James Foreman
SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

cc: Albany Movement
      SCLC
      SNCC

1. In protest of King’s jailing on 10 July, thirty-two demonstrators were arrested at Albany City Hall. The eleven youths involved were sent to the Juvenile Detention Center in Camilla, and the remaining twenty-one adults were sent to the Mitchell County Jail (Claude Sitton, “Protest in Georgia,” New York Times, 12 July 1962).

2. Burke Marshall to King, 26 July 1962.

3. The leaders of the Albany Movement sent a follow-up memo to Kennedy outlining six complaints, including: “1. Clergymen refused visitation, 2. Inadequate and unstable diet, 3. No bedding and/or mat­tresses, 4. Refusal to accept supplementary food, 5. General overcrowding that borders on inhumanity, 6. Non-acceptance of clothes for prisoners” (Albany Movement, Memo to Robert F. Kennedy, 23 July 1962). Reverend Benjamin Gay, chairman of the Albany Movement Church Division, sent a similar list of unsatisfactory conditions at the Mitchell County Jail to Police Chief Laurie Pritchett. Gay called the jailed demonstrators “political prisoners” who will “remain in jail as long as conscience dictates” (Gay to Pritchett, 23 July 1962).

Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.