A Freedom Rider remembers: 50 years later, an Amherst woman still feels the
sting of a Mississippi policeman's blows
by BEN STORROW Staff, amherstbulletin.com
April 29th 2011
It was the third day following Jean Denton-Thompson's arrest for
participating in a sit-in at the Trailways Bus Station in Jackson, Miss. She
was 19 and alone, the sole woman left among the 12 people who had ridden
from Montgomery, Ala., to Jackson with the intention of desegregating that
state's bus system. Seated across a table from her in a "long, low,
cement-brick" room was Hinds County Prison Farm Superintendent Max Thomas.
"He was six-three and he must have weighed 210 to 250 and I was only about
95 pounds at the time," recalled Denton-Thompson, 69, who now lives in
Amherst.
"One of the things he told you was that you had to say 'yes sir' and 'no
sir,' " she said during an interview at her home this week. "I was raised by
two strong loving people who said we are all the same, God made us, no one
is better than you or less than you. You don't have to say yes sir or no
sir... "
Thomas interrogated Denton-Thompson for 10 minutes or so.
"I continued to say yes this, that and the other," she said. "I said it in
such a way where I didn't have to say yes sir, no sir.
"He asked me a question and looked over like this," she said, motioning to
the side, "and of course I turned and in that half second I paused. That is
when he slapped me. Then he turned over and slapped me the other way. I
almost passed out."
That was May 27, 1961.
Next week, Jean Denton-Thompson will appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." She
will join over 150 other Freedom Riders -- the protesters, both black and
white, who attempted to integrate the bus routes of the American South in
the summer of 1961. The show will be broadcast on WCVB Boston at 4 p.m. and
on CBS 3 of Springfield at 5 p.m. on May 4. The group is also the subject of
a PBS documentary, "Freedom Riders," set to premier on May 16.
Today, Jean Denton-Thompson, who settled here in 1976, lives with her
husband, James Q. Denton, a retired mathematics professor at Amherst
College, and their son, Daniel, 29.
A lot has happened in her life since 1961. Born and raised in New Orleans,
she has been married twice. She moved to New York, then San Francisco,
working as an activist in both cities, before settling in Massachusetts. A
licensed nurse, she has worked at the Belchertown State School and as a
service coordinator for the state Department of Mental Retardation, among
other jobs. Denton-Thompson is retired now. These days much of her time is
spent conducting genealogical research, basket weaving, "hangin' with
friends" and traveling.
But a half century later the slap at a prison farm in Hinds County, Miss.,
still stings.
Call to action
The story has it origins in Washington, D.C., with an activist group called
the Congress for Racial Equality, or CORE for short.
In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the segregation of
transportation facilities for interstate travelers -- places like bus
terminals and their lunch counters -- was unconstitutional. Yet the ruling
was widely reported to have gone unheeded in the Deep South.
A group of 13 CORE members stepped forward. They were a diverse bunch: seven
were black, six were white. Their ages ranged from 18 to 61. They called
themselves the Freedom Riders and on May 4, 1961, the group boarded two
buses in Washington, D.C., bound for New Orleans. Their route would take
them through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and
finally Louisiana.
"We were waiting for the people to come because we were going to have a mass
rally when they arrived," said Denton-Thompson, who was a member of the New
Orleans CORE chapter.
In the first week, the riders were arrested in Charlotte, N.C. In Rock Hill,
S.C., their buses were attacked.
On May 13, they arrived in Atlanta and met with Martin Luther King Jr. But
the warm reception they received there was short-lived. The next day, as the
group was traveling through Anniston, Ala., one of the buses was firebombed.
The passengers managed to make it out alive, but not before being severely
beaten by a mob.
The second bus, pressing on, made it to Birmingham, where it too was
confronted by a mob, this time made up of Ku Klux Klan members aided by
local police.
The violence persuaded CORE's national leadership to call off the ride,
Denton-Thompson said. The riders who had not been hospitalized were flown to
New Orleans.
Resolve solidified
Yet other civil rights activists felt the ride should continue. On May 16,
22 students from the Nashville Student Movement boarded a bus bound for
Montgomery to continue the protests. In New Orleans, Denton-Thompson
resolved that she too would join the effort to continue the ride.
Denton-Thompson had joined the civil rights movement in 1960 at the behest
of her parents, a nurse with no formal training and a crane operator on the
New Orleans waterfront. Her sisters, Alice, then 20, and Shirley, 17, also
joined.
At her first sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter, ammonia was poured on
the counter to try to deter the protesters. They did not relinquish their
seats, but were not served. Later, her father, John Henry Thompson, lost his
job because of his daughters' civil rights activism.
"He never wavered," Denton-Thompson said, and did not ask the young women to
stop their work. Instead, he crisscrossed the country looking for work.
When the Freedom Ride sparked a violent response in Alabama in the summer of
1961, Denton-Thompson was not about to back down. She and four others took a
train to Montgomery to join the protests.
"When we got off the train we were met by National Guard. They had declared
martial law. Martial law they don't mess around," Denton-Thompson said. "You
got off the train and they escorted you, they had their guns, their rifles
all set."
Sitting at her Amherst dinner table Monday, Denton-Thompson recalled
thinking, "This country [is] known for freedom and equality... and here I
couldn't sit where I wanted to sit, eat where I want to eat, drink water
where I want to drink. I was let down. ... all you wanted was to be treated
like any other American."
Jailed, beaten
The small group was given a National Guard escort to the home of their hosts
in Montgomery. As they passed through the streets, Denton-Thompson could see
National Guardsmen stationed atop stores and buildings. A detail of
guardsmen were posted outside the home where they were to stay.
Inside, the group planned strategy with Martin Luther King Jr.
"There was just all of us in a huge room talking about what needed to be
done," Denton-Thompson said. "He was lying on the floor with all of us. He
was just like one of us."
The group ultimately decided to send two buses from Montgomery to Jackson.
One group would travel via Greyhound, the other on Trailways.
Denton-Thompson joined the latter. While waiting at the city's Trailways
station, members of the group decided to stage a sit-in at the terminal's
lunch counter.
"We just integrated that. We just sat down and had lunch before we left,"
Denton-Thompson recalled, noting that with a pack of reporters and National
Guardsmen standing nearby, the incident passed uneventfully.
Things changed when the group arrived in Jackson. The Times-Picayune of New
Orleans published this report: "Two sorties of 'Freedom Riders' made a
bloodless invasion of race-conscious Mississippi Wednesday. They wound up in
city jail here for breaking the state segregation laws."
The National Guard escorted the buses to Jackson, but the riders were
arrested after "police met them inside the bus terminal and ordered them to
move along. When they refused they were immediately booked on two counts --
of refusing to move on when ordered by police and causing a breach of the
peace," the paper reported.
Denton-Thompson spent four nights in jail, first at Jackson City Jail, then
Hinds County Jail and finally at the county jail's farm, the site of her
encounter with Max Thomas. What happened there is a matter of some dispute.
Denton-Thompson said she was not the only protester assaulted that day. C.T.
Vivan and James Lawson, both prominent in the civil rights movement, were
also beaten by interrogators, she said.
An FBI investigation of the incident concluded that no wrongdoing had been
committed by Hinds County law enforcement, she said.
"That was a lie because I know I was beaten," Denton-Thompson said of that
investigation.
Upon being bailed out, she caught a flight home to New Orleans. But she did
so with a new sense of resolve.
"You change after somebody starts messin' with you because it was a fight, a
nonviolent fight," she said. "And we were going to get what we wanted. That
was equality for all people."
Denton-Thompson worked at a CORE's staging ground in New Orleans, teaching
nonviolent resistance tactics to demonstrators being sent to Jackson to
protest Mississippi's Jim Crow laws. She picketed daily on Canal Street,
protesting in front of a segregated lunch counter at Woolworth's. And in the
summer of 1962, she went to North Carolina to participate in CORE's Freedom
Highway initiative, which was aimed at desegregating hotels and eateries
along that state's highway system.
Some progress
In 1965, the efforts began to pay off. New Orleans eased its segregation
laws, opening up jobs and accommodations that had previously been denied to
its black residents, Denton-Thompson said.
Nearly 50 years later, Denton-Thompson said she believes that the United
States has made progress addressing racial equality. But the country still
has a way to go, she added.
"I think we shouldn't sit on our laurels," she said, noting the burning of
the Macedonia Church, a predominantly black congregation in Springfield, the
night President Barack Obama was elected in 2008.
Many of today's issues impact people of all colors, she said. The quality of
education in America is declining. The health care system must be improved.
And more must be done to address any resentment that exists between the
country's many ethnic groups, she said.
"To me the working poor need to come together and fight together,"
Denton-Thompson said. "We need to fight injustice."
Original Page: http://www.amherstbulletin.com/story/id/205699/
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