The Man Who Drove the Mules for MLK Jr.
Albert Turner Helped Launch the Voting Rights Movement
Sep 12, 2009
When Albert Turner was laid to rest in 2000, he too was carried to his grave in a wagon drawn by mules.
Mission to Defeat Jim Crow
The two men’s lives were connected by a common mission: to overturn Jim Crow and give black people the rights guaranteed them by the U.S. Constitution.
Turner lived in Marion, Ala., seat of Perry County, in the Alabama Black Belt some 30 miles northwest of Selma.
The Arrest of “Sack Daddy” Orange
If Selma was the birthplace of the voting-rights revolution, Marion was its incubator. It was there, in 1965, that big James Orange -- Sack Daddy, they called him -- was arrested for picketing for the right of black citizens to register and vote.
The Death of Jimmy Lee Jackson
Albert Turner, then a 29-year-old budding businessman, organized a night march on the jail to demand Orange's release. In the ensuing violence, Jimmy Lee Jackson was beaten and shot while attempting to rescue his 92-year-old grandfather. Jackson died a few days later, and Perry County residents were galvanized into action.
"If Albert Turner had not led the march that night, I might have been killed," Orange said at Turner’s funeral services.
But Albert Turner wasn't through marching. In the cold, rainy march to the cemetery for Jimmy Lee Jackson’s burial, Turner conceived the idea for a march from Selma to Montgomery to petition Gov. George Wallace in behalf of black voting rights.
“Either Get With Us or We’re Going Alone”
That march, scheduled for March 7, 1965, was about to be postponed until Martin Luther King Jr. could obtain the approval of a friendly federal judge. But when Turner arrived from Marion with a cohort of aroused Perry County citizens, something had to happen. Turner, recalls "Sack Daddy" Orange, put it to the leadership in Selma: "Y'all either get with us or we're going without you."
The march began, but was stopped at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge across the Alabama River. A law-enforcement posse wielding clubs and tear gas attacked the marchers in what has been emblazoned on the nation’s memory as “Bloody Sunday.”
Protecting Martin Luther King Jr.
Selma attorney J. L. Chestnut remembered an episode in which Turner's cool may have prolonged the life of King. The civil-rights leader was giving a sermon in a Marion church when an FBI agent passed the word that a bomb had been planted in the church. Was this a legitimate warning, or a ruse to get King to step outside where he could become a target?
"I saw giant beads of sweat rolling down Martin Luther King's face," said Chestnut. "And then Albert stepped out front of the church and instructed a small group of men to surround King and move him out a side door. And the rest of us went out the front." King lived to preach another day.
At Turner’s funeral, a succession of speakers, including the governor of Alabama, a member of Congress, a justice of the state Supreme Court and Martin Luther King III went to Marion to pay their repects.
Dick Gregory’s Tribute
Dick Gregory, the comedian-turned-activist, said he had learned of Turner’s death through an article in The New York Times. Resorting to a bit of hyperbole, Gregory told the mourners:
"Ten billion years from now the only reason America's name will be mentioned will be because of this movement."
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