Laurie Pritchett, police chief of Albany, Georgia, from 1959 to 1966, was primarily known for his role in containing the efforts of the Albany Movement, a group of civil rights organizations that in 1961 conducted a broad campaign against the city's institutionalized segregation. Pritchett’s nonviolent approach to demonstrations, including arrests of Martin Luther King, Jr., were seen as effective strategies in bringing the campaign to an end before the Movement could secure any concrete gains.
Pritchett was born 9 December 1926 in Griffin, Georgia, to Charlie and Ida Denham Pritchett. After attending both Auburn University and South Georgia College, he graduated from the FBI National Academy and the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville.
In late 1961, two years after Pritchett was appointed chief of police, the Albany Movement brought civil rights activists to Albany to contest racial segregation in bus and train stations, libraries, parks, and hospitals, as well as discrimination in jury representation and in employment. In anticipation of the arrests of a large number of protestors, Pritchett arranged to have access to jails in nearby cities. He also ordered his officers to enforce the law without using violence and to make arrests under laws protecting the public order, rather than under the more legally unstable segregation laws.
On 16 December 1961, when King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to Albany to draw national attention to the protests, Pritchett arrested King and SCLC treasurer Ralph Abernathy for “parading without a permit, congregation on the sidewalk, and obstructing traffic.” They were found guilty of these charges in early July of 1962 and spent two days in jail before an anonymous supporter paid their bail. Pritchett again arrested King in late July, but he was well aware throughout the campaign that demonstrations increased with the jailing of King.
Pritchett was also careful to avoid the negative nationwide attention that police brutality could bring to his city and police department. Following an incident on July 24 in which officials assaulted peaceful demonstrators, including a pregnant woman, he quickly took control of the situation by declaring that he was an advocate of nonviolence and ordered his officers to refrain from using clubs or guns unless attacked. Pritchett, who had a close relationship with white newsmen covering the protests, was featured in several important magazines and newspapers for his belief in nonviolent law enforcement. The lack of violence in Albany resulted in very little media coverage of the actual protests.
In 1996, Pritchett left Albany to become police chief in High Point, North Carolina, a position he held until 1974. Although he and King were on opposite sides of the Albany struggle, Pritchett later maintained that King was “a close personal friend.” He died in High Point in 2000 at the age of 73.