From S. S. Seay
Author: Seay, S. S. (Solomon Snowden)
Date: August 1, 1962
Location: Montgomery, Ala.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Albany Movement
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Arrests
Details
While King remains in jail following his 27 July arrest for leading a prayer vigil outside Albany City Hall, MIA president Seay sends a letter of encouragement.1 This might be “the greatest test of your experience as a leader,” Seay writes, but “please keep in mind that I am as ever WITH MARTIN WITH ALL THAT I HAVE.”
Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.
c/o The City Jail
Albany, Georgia
Dear Martin:
You would have heard from me before now but I kept thinking it would be like it was before, just about time I got ready, along with others, to come over, the news came that you were out.2 In talking with Wyatt I got the idea that you just might be in jail at least for the duration of the hearing and that the hearing might last for the week.
We have sent telegrams to the President, Robert Kennedy, Governor [S. Ernest] Vandiver, Mayor [Asa] Kelly, and Chief of Police Pritchett.3 We are calling on the churches of Montgomery to take time out Sunday for prayer for you and Ralph and the Albany movement.4
Perhaps, you are facing the greatest test of your experience as a leader. It might be possible for you to feel the slacking of some cords of loyalty that have helped you sustain all along the path you have chosen to take. When that time comes to me I have one prayer that I keep: “If the Lord will go with me and keep me in the way that I go, bread to eat and raiment to put on, And bear my spirit above the crushing waves that threaten to overwhelm me, He is my God!”5
I do not know all the things I can do. Neither do all the things I shall do. But please keep in mind that I am as ever WITH MARTIN WITH ALL THAT I HAVE.
Yours for freedom,
[signed] S. S. Seay
S. S. Seay, Sr.
SSS/hg
1. King also received letters of support from other Montgomery colleagues such as MIA board member Irene West, who wrote that “We are so proud of your Courageous leadership. Good will soon triumph over wrong” (West to King and Abernathy, 1 August 1962).
2. King served two days in jail following his arrest in Albany on 16 December 1961, and two days of his forty-five-day sentence of 10 July 1962. For more on King’s jailing in July, see King, Albany Jail Diary from 10 July–11 July 1962, pp. 511–516 in this volume.
3. In his telegram to Robert F. Kennedy, Seay urges the attorney general to use the “power of your office to persuade the authorities in Albany, Georgia, to return to reason and desist from the shameful conduct they have exemplified before the world” (Seay to Kennedy, 30 July 1962). Others who sent telegrams of support included Connecticut governor John Dempsey, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, and labor leaders Walter Reuther and A. Philip Randolph (Dempsey to Vandiver, 30 July 1962; Powell to John F. Kennedy, 2 August 1962; Bluestone to Walker, 1 August 1962; and Randolph to John F. Kennedy, 30 July 1962).
4. In a 27 July 1962 form letter addressed to “Friends of Freedom,” Walker asked churches to mobilize their membership in a show of support for those arrested by sending telegrams to government and local Albany officials, mobilizing prayer vigils in their communities, and wearing black arm bands “symbolic of murdered justice in Albany” (Walker to Friend of Freedom, 27 July 1962).
5. Cf. Genesis 28:20.
Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.