Tuskegee Savings and Loan TCA Offices
This building on Tuskegee University's campus has been a critical hub of Black agency through the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. It is a symbol of the tireless efforts of Tuskegee’s Black residents to participate as full citizens in American society.
History Was Made Here:
Tuskegee Savings and Loan
Tuskegee Civic Association
Tuskegee Civic Association
African American owned Tuskegee Savings and Loan was established in 1894. Originally affiliated with Tuskegee Institute, it provided mortgages and banking services to Tuskegee’s Black middle class so they could finance their homes and avoid predatory practices and discrimination by white lenders.
Image: Advertisement published in the Tuskegee News, July 8, 1943, from Newspapers.com.
Tuskegee Civic Association
Tuskegee Civic Association
Tuskegee Civic Association
The Tuskegee Civic Association (TCA) was formed by members of Tuskegee’s Black middle class to work toward a society where Black people could participate fully in society, politically, economically, and socially, and benefit fully from public services and accommodations. The TCA led civil rights activities in Tuskegee from the 1940s until the 1960s by working to educate and register Black voters, challenging unjust laws in court, and appealing to local, state and federal government officials and agencies for equity.
Image: Dr. Charles Goode Gomillion, circa 1940–1960, The Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee University.
Crusade for Citizenship
Crusade for Citizenship
Crusade for Citizenship
When the city government of Tuskegee redrew the town's boundaries to exclude nearly every Black resident (and take away their municipal voting rights), the TCA encouraged the Black population to withhold their business from any merchant who did not support first class citizenship for African Americans. The resulting protest boycott, "The Crusade for Citizenship" continued for 2 years and had a huge negative economic impact on Tuskegee's white-owned businesses.
In 1957, Alabama Attorney General John Patterson ordered a raid of the building to search for evidence that the TCA was leading a boycott of Tuskegee’s white merchants. The TCA’s carefully crafted “Trade With Your Friends” campaign simply encouraged Tuskegee’s Black residents to trade with people who had their best interests at heart. The Black community decided that the white government of Tuskegee who had redrawn the city limits to exclude them and take away their municipal vote was not friendly. The Attorney General could not find sufficient evidence to prove that the TCA was breaking Alabama’s anti-boycott law with their actions. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the new boundaries of Tuskegee, finding that redistricting an area to prevent voters from voting was unconstitutional.
Image: This photograph of Jackie Robinson (second from the left), taken by P. H. Polk, preserves a Tuskegee Civic Association (TCA) mass meeting that took place on the second anniversary of start of the TCA’s Crusade for Citizenship, on June 23, 1959, The Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee University.
Attorney Fred Gray
Crusade for Citizenship
Crusade for Citizenship
Attorney Fred D. Gray, Sr.'s offices were in the same building as the TCA offices. He argued many of the court cases that shaped the Civil Rights Movement and struck down segregationist laws. Attorney Gray represented the TCA, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others over the decades of his practice. In 2022, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work.
Image: Fred Gray, Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Attorney Fred Gray: Select Notable Cases
The State of Alabama v. The Tuskegee Civic Association
After the Alabama State Legislature passed a bill which gerrymandered all of Tuskegee’s Black voters out of its city limits, Macon County’s African American residents responded by “trading with their friends.” White merchants accused the TCA of violating Alabama’s 1921 Anti-Boycott law. In July 1957, Attorney General John Patterson investigated the TCA and filed a bill of complaint seeking a temporary injunction against the TCA coercing people to boycott white merchants in Tuskegee. The TCA filed a motion to dissolve the injunction. The judge ruled in the TCA’s favor because the State did not meet the necessary burden of proof to make its case, and because the Constitution protects freedom of speech and people’s freedom to trade with whomever they like.
*image: Historic Marker, photograph by Mark Hilton
C. G. Gomillion et al v. Phil M. Lightfoot et al.
In August, 1957, the TCA retained Attorney Fred Gray to test the constitutionality of Alabama Act No. 140 - the state law which redrew the boundaries of Tuskegee to exclude Black voters and residents. The case was dismissed by District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. on the grounds that the court did not have authority over municipal boundaries - regardless of the intention of the creation of those boundaries. The United States Supreme Court heard the case October 18 and 19, 1960, and on November 14, 1960, it returned a unanimous decision in favor of the TCA. This case was especially significant because federal courts, with support from the Supreme Court, usually rule that matters which should be the jurisdiction of individual states were outside of the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction. The court reversed itself with this ruling because the intention and effect of Tuskegee’s new boundaries stripped Constitutionally granted voting rights from Tuskegee’s Black residents.
The United States of America v. The State of Alabama
In 1959, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, working in cooperation with the TCA, filed suit against the State of Alabama and two former Macon County Registrars seeking a permanent injunction against racial discrimination in voter registration processes. This case ended up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court which sent it back to the district court and resulted in Judge Frank M. Johnson ruling in favor of the TCA and ordering a list of restrictions on Boards of Registrars forbidding them from acting in racially discriminatory ways in the fulfillment of their duties.
Anthony T. Lee et al. v. The Macon County Board of Education
In 1963, the TCA brought a class action on behalf of the parents of 16 high school students against the Macon County Board of Education seeking school integration. The case was decided in favor of the TCA and the parents. The Macon County Board of Education was ordered to open Tuskegee High School on a desegregated basis on Sept. 2, 1963. Governor George Wallace sent 100 state troopers to keep the students from entering the school. Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson placed the Governor and the state troopers under a restraining order to keep them away from the school, and President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard to keep watch over the Black and white students returning to school the following week.
William P. Mitchell et al. and United States of America v. Edgar Johnson et al.
This suit brought against the Macon County Jury Commission in 1964 alleged that the jury selection in Macon County was discriminatory and that the names of only a very few registered Black voters were kept on the jury rolls of the county. Federal district court noted the Constitutional violations and discrimination in the practices of the Jury Commission and ruled that they be fixed. Rather than comply, the jury commission resigned. A newly appointed jury commission complied with the order. This case was important because it was one of the first civil cases targeting the systematic exclusion of Blacks from jury service, and it established that inclusion on a token basis is as much a denial of Constitutional rights as complete exclusion.
Williams v. Wallace
After the brutal attack of marchers in Selma, AL by State Troopers on March 7, 1965, or “Bloody Sunday,” activists Hosea Williams, John Lewis and Amelia Boynton Robinson filed suit against Alabama Governor, George Wallace, Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark and other state officials. The demonstrators sought protection from state interference in peaceful marches and violence on the grounds that such demonstrations were a constitutional right. On March 9, Judge Frank M. Johnson issued a restraining order on the plaintiffs from marching until a court could hear the case. Marchers led by Martin Luther King, Jr. on March 9 turned around at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, honoring the court order in what became known as “Turnaround Tuesday.” On March 17, Judge Johnson ruled that the Selma to Montgomery marches could proceed without state interference and ordered that the state must provide protection from the state law enforcement, calling on Federal forces if necessary. The Selma to Montgomery March departed Selma on March 21, 1965 and arrived in Montgomery on March 25 to petition Governor Wallace for long-denied voting rights. The march assisted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.