Shirley Sherrod, a long-time civil rights leader, is the executive director of the Southwest Georgia Project, founded in 1961 in the town of Albany. It has been working to register local people to vote AND to run for office.
“My husband, Charles Sherrod, was one of the founding members of SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] and the first field secretary of SNCC,” she said. “So he came to southwest Georgia because the Justice Department had filed a voting rights suit against Terrell County.
“His work started here in southwest Georgia and it also led to creating the Albany Movement and the movement in Terrell County, in Sumter County, in Baker and Worth [counties].”
She recently described the Project’s work before Election Day and the strong voter turnout in Albany.
“We encouraged people to vote absentee and those who didn’t, we encouraged them to go to early voting. And the lines here were wrapped around the building. And the young people, some of them who were part of a coalition that included Black Voters Matter, decided to get snacks and water to people who were standing in line.”
As much as Georgia has changed since the Sixties, Sherrod agreed that in recent years, the clock of history has turned backward in terms of voting rights.
“We got the right to vote and then the Supreme Court took some of that away [Shelby County v. Holder, 2013]. And who knows what else they are going to do to suppress our vote.”
Regarding the January 5 runoff election for Georgia’s two seats in the U.S. Senate, Sherrod spelled out what the Southwest Georgia Project’s role in the coming weeks will be.
“As a nonprofit organization, we can’t tell people who to vote for, but we can work really hard with folks. […] “We realize how important this election is. Again, we can’t tell our people who to vote for, but we can work with them and push them to get out and vote.”
After Kentucky: Will the will of the people be done in November?
