January 30, 1965-Alabama

New Vote Drive in Ala Counties

An article in the Chicago Defender by John Lynch (dateline January 30, 1965 Atlanta GA) mentions Wilcox County as one of the Alabama counties that SCLC is targeting. The article states that zero blacks are registered in Wilcox, although by the time we arrived to work on voter registration that summer, 50 voters had successfully completed applications. Whether or not they were later “purged” as a then-common obstructionist tactic, I do not know.

I have assembled a Wilcox County Civil Rights Timeline that space will not allow to be included in my forthcoming book, This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Wilcox County Freedom Fight, and will be adding key events until next year when the book will be published by University of Alabama Press. If you recall other key events in Wilcox County 1963-1966, please write them in the comment link below. Thank you for helping to commemorate some of the forgotten events of the civil rights struggle and the special role of the Wilcox County AL Freedom Fighters. – Maria Gitin