What was the name of the 1961 voter-registration project that challenged racial barriers in Albany, Georgia?

The Albany Movement was the 1961 voter-registration and desegregation campaign that challenged racial barriers in Albany, Georgia.

The movement began in November 1961 as a coalition of local Black organizations, including the NAACP and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Activists demanded the desegregation of public facilities, improved access to voting, and an end to discriminatory treatment. Demonstrators used sit-ins, marches, boycotts, and mass arrests as tools of nonviolent protest.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference joined the campaign in late 1961. King was arrested in December, but the movement did not immediately win its major demands. The campaign nevertheless exposed the limitations of relying on arrests and helped activists refine tactics used later in Birmingham.

Albany is sometimes described as a failure because desegregation goals were not quickly achieved. Historians also emphasize its training value, local organizing, and contribution to later campaigns.