Charles Sherrod

Charles Melvin Sherrod (January 2, 1937 – October 11, 2022) was an American minister and civil rights activist. During the civil rights movement, Sherrod helped found the Albany Movement while serving as field secretary for southwest Georgia for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He also participated in the Selma Voting Rights Movement and in many other campaigns of the civil rights movement of that era.

Sherrod's activism continued throughout his life through the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education (SWGAP), New Communities, and as an Albany City Council Member.

Civil rights movement Sherrod first took part in the civil rights movement after the Supreme Court of the United States desegregated public schools in the Brown v. Board of Education case. In 1954, Sherrod first participated in sit-ins at white churches with the goal to desegregate them.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Sherrod joined SNCC in 1961 when it was recruiting new students to join in Rock Hill, South Carolina. During this time Sherrod was at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. He was offered a job as a teacher but turned it down so he could be a part of SNCC in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

When Sherrod was released from jail he became a contributing member of SNCC and was often referred to as one of its founding fathers. Working his way up in the SNCC organization, he was named the director and field secretary of Southwest Georgia. Sherrod's strategy was to focus on the small town of Albany, Georgia as the hub for voter registration activity for the surrounding farm country.

The Albany Movement

Rather than returning to school in the fall, Sherrod moved to become a full-time organizer to stimulate new black initiatives in the strongly segregated and Ku Klux Klan–dominated community of Albany, Georgia. Sherrod was later joined by fellow SNCC worker Cordell Reagon in October 1961.

The Albany Movement's main goal was winning the right to vote for blacks in and around Albany. The Movement also campaigned for desegregation, particularly an end to segregated terminals at bus stations and interstate travel and repeal of the city's segregation ordinances. local leaders preferred negotiation with authorities for reforms. While some local leaders, such as C. W. King, an African-American real estate agent, and H. C. Boyd, the minister at Shiloh Baptist Church, supported the campaign, others considered forcing Sherrod and Reagon to leave town.

Sherrod, Reagon and SNCC were also at odds with the tactics employed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. While the movement was based on the nonviolent methods Sherrod learned from King, Sherrod advocated a more democratic approach based on grassroots organizing and aimed at long-term solutions, rather than King's style of short-term campaigns, dependent on his personal charisma and featuring more top-down direction.

The movement drew on support from students from Albany colleges and high schools in the town; 32 students were later expelled from Albany State University for their protest activities.

The percentage of African Americans in Selma who were able to vote was extremely low, at about 2%. When Sheriff Jim Clark barred Blacks' efforts to register to vote SCLC director of direct action, James Bevel, decided on a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the state capital, to publicize their cause. Sherrod did not agree with this policy and decided to devote his efforts to the Southwest Georgia Project (SWGAP) instead.

Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education

After leaving SNCC, Sherrod and his wife Shirley Sherrod started taking part in the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education (SWGAP). The work done in Albany helped introduce the movement into 15 different counties throughout southwest Georgia. He then started recruiting students from the Union Theological Seminary, where he had received his master's degree, to assist in the project. This project has three main focuses: food, farms, and human rights, working in conjunction with New Communities and land trusts. The goal of the food program is to address the accessibility of food, the lack of food and the community aspect of food. co-founding New Communities, a collective farm in Southwest Georgia modeled on kibbutzim in Israel.

He later served as an elected member of the Albany City Council from 1976 to 1990.

Sherrod and his wife had two children. Sherrod died on October 11, 2022.