Georgians, other Freedom Riders plan 50th anniversary
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/georgians-other-freedom-riders-536975.html
May 27, 2010
By Bob Keefe
WASHINGTON -- The two black men boarded the buses in Washington along
with 11 others, both white and black, bound for an unforgettably
harrowing journey through the segregated South.
By the time they arrived in Mississippi in May 1961, John Lewis had
been beaten for trying to use a "Whites Only" bathroom.
Hank Thomas barely escaped a firebombed bus, was arrested for trying
to use a white man's bathroom and was left by police at the hands of
Ku Klux Klan.
"It was my good fortune," said Thomas, who was 19 at the time, "that
I could run fast."
Today, John Lewis is a Democratic congressman representing Atlanta.
Thomas is a Stone Mountain businessman who with his wife owns two
McDonald's restaurants and a Marriott hotel franchise.
Together, Lewis, Thomas and other members of that first "Freedom
Ride" are planning to once again retrace their hellish 1961 journey,
which was intended to be a nonviolent protest of Jim Crow laws and
segregation in the South.
Along the way, they'll remind the world of an integral turning point
in the civil rights movement.
Thomas is president and Lewis is an honorary co-chair of the
Mississippi Freedom 50th celebration planned for May 2011. Tourism
officials expect the event, formally announced in Washington this
past week, will be one of Mississippi's biggest tourist draws in years.
"This will be a celebration, of course, but more importantly, it will
be an opportunity to educate our young people and to make certain
that we not let this part of our history be lost to future
generations," said U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who's also
organizing the event.
Forty-nine years ago, the original Freedom Riders were in anything
but a celebratory mood as they rolled from Washington, through
Atlanta to Mississippi.
Their intent was to test a Supreme Court ruling handed down the year
before that prohibited bus terminals and other public transportation
places from discrimination based on race.
Riders, both black and white, studied Mohandas Gandhi and other
pacifists and agreed to a pact of nonviolence, but they knew it
wouldn't be a peaceful trip through the country. The night before, an
organizer took them out to dinner.
"That was the first time I ever visited Washington, and it also was
the first time I ever had the opportunity to eat at a Chinese
restaurant," Lewis recalled. "They told us to eat well, because
tonight may be your last supper."
While the Supreme Court ruled that segregating buses and bus
terminals violated the Interstate Commerce Act, towns and communities
throughout the South disagreed, and locals wanted no part of the
Freedom Riders.
Some accused the riders of intentionally inciting violence. Alabama's
governor considered them troublemakers who didn't deserve police
protection. The Kennedy administration at one point condemned the
Freedom Rides for putting the country's internal disagreements over
race on a worldwide stage.
The attack on Lewis by angry whites waiting for the Freedom Riders in
Rock Hill, S.C., and Thomas' subsequent arrest and clash with the
Klan were only the first indicators of the divisiveness, and the
first of the violence that would come.
In Anniston, Ala., the bus Thomas was on was stopped by an angry mob
of whites about two hours after it had left Atlanta. Its tires were
slashed. Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail in a back window, while
others held the front door closed. When the Freedom Riders pushed
their way out of the flames and smoke, just as the fuel tank
exploded, they were beaten by the angry whites waiting outside.
Thomas took a baseball bat aside his head.
In Montgomery, Lewis and three others -- including an aide to
then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy who had arrived separately to
observe -- were beaten unconscious by a mob of several hundred white
protesters as soon as they stepped off the bus.
Once in Mississippi, the riders were escorted immediately to jail for
violating local segregation laws. Lewis and Thomas were among some
who were taken to the notorious Parchman prison camp, where for
several weeks they were deprived of sleep and clothing and sprayed
with fire hoses for singing and praying loudly.
"That was my first time ever visiting the state of Mississippi," said
Lewis, who was 21 at the time. "And I will never, ever forget that
visit as long as I live."
The extent of segregation in the South varied from town to town along
the bus route.
"When we would leave Atlanta, our neckties would start feeling a
little tighter," Lewis recalled. "When we would pass into Alabama,
our throats would be getting drier.
"By the time we reached Mississippi, we were in a very serious mood,
because we knew we were taking our lives in our hands," he said.
Yet despite the fear, despite beatings, despite the jailings, the
Freedom Ride buses filled with blacks and whites alike kept rolling
from Washington through the South. They would keep coming until the
jails were filled and until the "Whites Only" signs came down from
the bus terminals, the restaurants and eventually every other
establishment in the South.
In all, 350 to 400 people participated in the Freedom Rides, Thomas
said. His goal over the next year: Track down every living participant.
Of the original 13, he said, only four are still alive, including him
and Lewis.
"Unfortunately, I've been to a lot of funerals," he said.
Thomas counts himself lucky. Four years after that first Freedom
Ride, he was shipped off to Vietnam, where he was badly wounded in an
enemy ambush.
"As I've gotten older, I think how lucky I am, the number of times I
did escape death," said Thomas, now 69. "People have often asked me
about the fear factor, but when you're 19 years old, you really aren't afraid.
"You don't have sense enough to be afraid," he added. "But I did have
the sense that what I was doing was going to be historic, and that it
was going to change the country."
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