George Albertz Papers

George Albertz was born in 1935 in New York, NY to Hubert and Krescenz Albertz, both German immigrants. He graduated from St. John’s University in 1961 and was a member of the Army Reserve for seven years. Influenced by his father, who fought corruption in the AFL-CIO Services Employees’ Union Local 32-E and whose papers are also at Queens College, Albertz joined the Civil Rights movement. Albertz joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in February 1964. He helped raise awareness of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party by contacting local churches and organizations for support. Albertz traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi in 1964 as part of the Mississippi Freedom Project. He was arrested there 3 times, twice for “reckless driving” and once for “parading without a permit and contributing to the delinquency of minors.” The last charge occurred while Albertz was walking back to the Greenwood SNCC office after participating in a demonstration of teenagers picketing a store in response to police brutality. This arrest led to a $500 payment for bail. A high volume of targeted arrests were made against civil rights activists in Mississippi, which were lumped together and sent to the Federal Courts and over concerns of fair trial. They were sent back to the Mississippi courts where they were not further pursued. The charges against Albertz accumulated that summer were eventually dropped by City of Greenwood. In August 1964, Albertz went to protest the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, after returning to New York from Mississippi. In 1966, he joined the Woodcrest commune in Rifton, New York, which in 1964 donated a car to a group of Queens College students. These students, under the guidance of Queens College Professor Sid Simon, went down to Mississippi to rebuild churches destroyed by the Ku Klux Klan.