Albany, Georgia's Courthouses

Items

• [Photograph of home of Judge David A. Vason, Albany, Dougherty County, Georgia, ca. 1951-1952]

  Albany, ca. 1951-1952. Home of Judge David A. Vason, located at 405 North Monroe Street was built in 1855. It is one of the few remaining homes in Albany built prior to the Civil War. The latticework between the first and second floors was added later.
• William G. Anderson (b. 1927)

  Encyclopedia article about William Gilchrist Anderson, who received national attention during the early 1960s as the president of the Albany Movement. Thereafter, he distinguished himself as an osteopathic physician, surgeon, educator, and hospital administrator. Born in Americus on December 12, 1927, to Emma Jean Gilchrist and John Daniel Anderson Sr., Anderson enrolled at Fort Valley State College (later Fort Valley State University), where he pursued a premedical course of study. His education was interrupted in 1944 when, at the age of seventeen, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in the midst of World War II; he was eventually assigned to a company stationed in the Philippines and was selected to join the navy's Hospital Corpsmen. After the war ended, Anderson graduated from the Atlanta College of Mortuary Science and worked briefly at a black funeral home in Montgomery, Alabama. Later after a visit to the Albany office of physician Willie Joe Reese, Anderson decided to pursue a career in osteopathy. With Reese's assistance, Anderson was admitted to the Des Moines Still College of Osteopathy in Iowa and completed his degree in 1956., He interned at the prestigious Flint Osteopathic Hospital in Michigan, returning to Georgia afterwards to set up his medical practice in Albany. There Anderson joined a small but close-knit community of black professionals, most of whom belonged to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, or the Criterion Club, a local civic organization. The arrival of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists in the fall of 1961 inspired Albany's black residents to press more aggressively for racial reform. The city's black leaders formed the Albany Movement in mid-November, and they selected Anderson as their president because he was relatively new to town and largely insulated from white economic reprisals by his private practice. As tensions escalated he became convinced that local leaders lacked the financial and organizational resources to mount a successful protest. In order to shore up the movement's weaknesses, Anderson invited his old friends Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy to lead demonstrations in Albany. Although many observers deemed the Albany Movement unsuccessful, subsequent appraisals have credited the movement with increasing the number of registered black voters, inspiring protest in neighboring communities, and hastening the ultimate desegregation of Albany's public facilities, which occurred only one year following the movement's conclusion. Following the Albany Movement's dissolution in 1962, Anderson accepted an appointment as house physician at Art Centre Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. In 1964 he became the first black surgical resident in Detroit's history, and thereafter conducted a group surgical practice in the city until 1984. During this period he remained active in the civil rights movement, serving as a member on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's board of directors, among other capacities., In the years that followed, Anderson accepted a variety of administrative and educational positions in the medical profession including service within the American Osteopathic Association (including becoming the first African American president of the AOA in 1994), as a clinical professor of surgery at the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific (later Western University of Health Sciences) in California, as an associate clinical professor at the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and as associate dean of the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri., The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.
• Nelson Tift

  Image of Nelson Tift. In 1836 Tift, a northern merchant and entrepreneur, founded Albany, Georgia, a place later referred to as the heart of the state's Cotton Kingdom.
• C.B. King (1923-1988)

  Encyclopedia article about C. B. King, a prominent African American lawyer during the civil rights struggle in southwest Georgia. King attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and the law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. King practiced law for many years in his hometown of Albany, Georgia., The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.
• Couple sifts through their belongings after the tornado damaged their home.

  View of an unidentified couple sorting through damage at their home caused by a tornado that hit Albany, Georgia.
• Tornado victims rest in bed.

  View of two of the victims of a tornado that hit Albany, Georgia lying in a bed, possibly in a shelter.
• Inmates were directed to help with recovery efforts after the tornado.

  View of inmates being directed to help in the restoration and clean up of downtown Albany, Georgia after a tornado.
• View of downtown damage

  View of downtown Albany, Georgia showing the damage caused by a tornado.
• Aerial view of business district damage

  Aerial view of the damage caused to the business district in Albany, Georgia by a tornado.
• Aerial view of Albany, Georgia, after the February 10, 1940 tornado. Albany, Georgia, February 1940.