Jonathan King re vividly that day in1962 when he was 5, sitting on the edge of his seat in the family car, outside a hospital anxiously awaiting his baby sibling’s arrival.
After what felt like hours his mom, Marion King, didn’t come out of the hospital with a newborn in her arms. She was rolled out in a wheelchair and gently lifted into the car by hospital staff, where the family sat in silence until King’s dad, Slater, began driving them back home in Albany, Georgia.
Throughout the ride Jonathan King asked, “Mommy, Daddy, where is the baby?” But his parents had no reply.
“We went for weeks and never talked about the baby,” the Murrieta, Calif. resident recalled in an interview last week. “It just became something that we were never able to bring any closure to.”
That lack of closure persists, not just because of the loss of a family member, but because of what happened that led to that loss — a nearly 60-year-old injustice King’s mother suffered at the hands of Camilla, Ga. police officers, an injustice the King family is now asking Camilla to recognize.
“We are not looking for money, just an apology,” King said. “Apologize and maybe set up some kind of memorial not just for my mom, but .. for all the people who suffered at that time when you had this systemic segregation and racism aimed at people of color.”
Marion’s traumatic encounter with Camilla police was tied directly to advancing civil rights, a cause the King family has long advocated for.
Marion and her husband Slater were among the leaders in the Albany Movement, a largely nonviolent movement in 1961 and 1962 that challenged segregation and discrimination. Albany law enforcement did not take kindly to the movement and began making mass arrests.
One such mass arrest occurred in summer 1962, targeting young people, including a family friend. Many of those people were taken to a jail in Camilla, some 27 miles away.
Marion, who was five and a half months pregnant, and her three children drove there to bring food and clothing to those in jail.
Jonathan King recalls that shortly after arriving, things took a dangerous turn. Police officers shoved Marion to the ground then kicked her in the stomach and beat her until she lost consciousness.
Eventually Marion regained consciousness, gathered up her small children and drove home. The damage had already been done. Marion and Slater cried at home as they processed the night’s events, and the trauma was heightened a few months later when Marion suffered a still birth.
The assault drew widespread attention in Albany and beyond. The New York Times wrote about it. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. halted planned demonstrations in Albany and called for a day of penance after news of the event drew an angry, violent reaction in Albany. A year later John Lewis would mention the attack on Marion while speaking at the March on Washington.
For the Kings the pain persisted for decades. Jonathan King, now a retired school , said he wishes people would be more mindful of the way these traumatic events have historically impacted Black children.
King said that as painful as it was, his family was better positioned than many to cope with it in part because his father was a prominent businessman and citizen.
“Many of the people who were in those poor neighborhoods and didn’t have the wealth or resources to deal with racism, those are the folks I’m really concerned about,” King said. “The focus is on my mom, but over many generations you see how this (traumas) has hurt many Black families along the way.”
The municipality of Camilla has never apologized for the violence. King, his brother Edward Dubois, sister Abena and the rest of the family are hoping to change that.
In September they went to the Camilla city council requesting that the city apologize, share the story of the assault and erect a monument memorializing the many people who have fought for civil rights in Camilla, not just Marion King, especially those who were victims of the Camilla Massacre.
The massacre occurred decades before — in 1868 — after Blacks had gained the right to vote in Georgia but a number of newly elected Black state legislators had been expelled. During a protest from Albany to Camilla, Whites along the route shot and killed a dozen protestors and wounded dozens more.
The city council listened to the Kings but did not take up the issue. Jonathan King and his family plan to return to Camilla next summer — the 60th Anniversary of the violence against their mother — to continue to highlight the issue.
King said an apology now could be powerful, because Camilla officials recognizing what happened could show other institutions how to stand up, highlight an injustice, and acknowledge a past wrong. He added he believes it would also allow some to look at their government and more confidently feel it is actually a “just” government.
He also thinks such an action would have offered some level of reprieve for his mother, who ed away in 2007.
“What my mother gave up and sacrificed for the cause, for the government to come back and apologize, it would of meant a lot,” King said.
For her part, Marion, who rarely spoke about the incident, wrote a reflection as part of a pictorial history book of the Albany Movement published in 2000.
“First, I cannot forget the pure, unadulterated hate on the faces of the two persons (policemen) who attacked me and my children. I say they attacked my children because I was holding one child in my arms, and had the other inside of me… “
“Second, I have been amazed at the strength that has come pouring into me from some source outside myself…”
“Third, the love which we now share with our little children seems newer and stronger than ever and compensates more than enough for any loss that we might have sustained. It is probably natural that we should be more dear to each other….”
“So, even though we don’t understand why the incident happened in its implications, and even though I have had some moments of real despair. I do feel that there is some master plan – some purpose for it all. I have had more moments of real hope than of despair, I see in some white southerners of just and generous spirit “signs of the coming of the Lord and I know His truth is marching on.”
