Ralph Allen
(1942 — 2005)

 

As remembered by Miriam Cohen Glickman
March 3, 2015

Ralph Allen and I worked in the Albany, Georgia SNCC project in the summer of 1963. Ralph was a white student volunteer from Massachusetts. The Movement in Albany had been going on for a few years and the local black community had not seen any progress. So the situation was discouraging and tough. As hard as it was, I only cried once that sumer. In article I wrote in 1963 for my college student newspaper I describe this:

...midnight Thursday we learned that Ralph had been arrested in Americus, Georgia. On Friday we heard that the police had taken him and two others out into the country and had beaten them. There were reports from inside the jail that Ralph's nose was broken so our attorney (the only Negro lawyer in southwest Georgia) went up to the jail, but the police did not let him in. Tuesday when the attorney was allowed in, he came back and told us: Ralph had needed stitches in his head. The day Ralph got out of jail and I saw all the swollen and bruised places on his face, I sat on the back steps and cried.

This wasn't Ralph's first arrest, not even his first beating. He an Bob Cover had been jailed for about three weeks earlier that summer. The jails were segregated and his white cell mates were offered time off their sentences for beating up Ralph and Bob. Then in late August Ralph was one of four civil rights workers who were charged with "insurrection" (the overthrowing of the state through force and violence). It was a tough summer for him.


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