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Lee Formwalt has recently written a book entitled ''Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Southwest Georgia Freedom Struggle - 1814-2014''. It explores the long fight for basic civil rights in Albany, Georgia. Even though local leaders had been pushing for civil rights for years, in 1961-62 the eyes of the nation focused on Albany, Georgia. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference descended on the small city in an effort to end segregation at the local Trailways bus depot. Unlike other battles of the civil rights movement, this one was notable because it was initially unsuccessful and forced leaders within the civil rights movement to reevaluate their strategies. Formwalt's book takes a much longer look at the civil rights movement than just this one year period in Albany and tries to understand the long struggle for civil rights. The book is being co-published by the Georgia Humanities Council and Albany Civil Rights Institute.
Lee W. Formwalt was a professor of history at Albany (GA) State University for 22 years (1977-1999) and served his last 2 years there as Dean of the Graduate School. Founder and editor of The Journal of Southwest Georgia History, he has written numerous scholarly articles and essays, and a book on southwest Georgia history, focusing largely on the African American experience. From 1999 to 2009, he was executive director of the Organization of American Historians, the world’s largest professional association and learned society devoted to the study of United States history. In 2009, he returned to Albany, GA, to become executive director of the Albany Civil Rights Institute. He retired in 2011 and lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he is currently working on a memoir and a collection of his essays and articles on southwest Georgia history.
