Freedom Rides Again
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/the-costs-of-freedom/Content?oid=1859163
Dylan Watson on the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders -- and
where they are now
by Dylan Watson
August 02, 2011
Hank Thomas walked up the steps of the Greyhound bus on a sunny May
4, 1961. As he surveyed its drab, blue-gray interior, the lanky
19-year-old African-American student from Howard University never
imagined he soon would come close to meeting his end on its floor.
He was part of the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE) to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision Boynton v.
Virginia, which made racial segregation illegal in interstate bus
stations, restaurants, bathrooms and on buses. CORE planned to make
sure the court ruling was enforced by riding buses through Virginia,
the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, ending the tour with
a rally in New Orleans.
The Freedom Riders group included seven blacks and six whites. Black
Riders would sit in the front of the bus, white Riders in the back,
and an interracial pair would sit together. A couple of the Riders
would sit in a traditional segregated manner, so they could bail out
any group members who got arrested. They planned to take two buses, a
Greyhound and a Trailways.
Group members had completed a four-day nonviolence training in
Washington, D.C., where they learned how to passively protect
themselves and deal with potential physical altercations. But Thomas
says he wasn't prepared for the violence they encountered.
The Freedom Riders' first stop was Richmond, Va. Some white onlookers
at the bus station jeered at the Riders, but nothing else happened.
The group stopped in six cities before arriving in Charlotte, N.C.,
where black riders walked into the white waiting room and milled
around the station without incident. It was an uneventful stop
until Charles Person decided to get his shoes shined.
"You know, you're sitting on a bus, you're getting on and off the
bus, and your shoes get scuffed up a lot," Person says. "As I was
exiting the restroom, I saw the shoeshine man there. I asked him, you
know, 'Can I get a shoeshine'? He said, well, he couldn't shine my
shoes, and if I persisted I would be arrested."
Getting a shoeshine wasn't one of CORE's planned tests, so Person
dropped the matter, but Joe Perkins, another Freedom Rider, demanded
a shoeshine. Charlotte police officers arrested him.
Things turned violent when the bus stopped in Winnsboro, S.C., and
black Riders John Lewis and Albert Bigelow walked into the white waiting room.
"They were accosted by several white toughs," Person recalls. "They
were punched and they were roughed up pretty good. Before it got too
bad, the local authorities came in and stopped it."
A short time later, Thomas sat down at a whites-only lunch counter at
the bus station and was arrested. When he arrived at the police
station, Thomas says officers led him handcuffed from their car
straight to a jail cell without booking him.
"As I remember, back at the time, the fact that they didn't
fingerprint me, I thought that was weird," he says. Police also
didn't take a mug shot or ask Thomas for any personal information.
There is no record Thomas ever was detained at the Winnsboro Police Department.
That night, Thomas says, police opened his cell and announced they
were going to take him for a ride.
"Where am I going?" Thomas asked.
He says one of the officers replied, "We're going to take you to the
bus station so you can leave." The officers put Thomas in a patrol
car and headed toward the bus station. When Thomas saw the station in
the distance, he knew something was wrong.
"I could see it all the lights in the station were out," Thomas
recalls. "A large crowd of white men were there around the bus
station. It looked as though they'd been having a good time, been
drinking, and I could see a few sticks and everything they had in
their hands." Half a block from the bus station, the officers stopped
the car and told him to get out, Thomas says.
"Well, it looks like the station is closed. When will the next bus
come?" he remembers asking. "I can't get out here. It looks pretty dangerous."
When he refused to leave the safety of the police car, Thomas says
the officer in the passenger's seat turned around, a glint from his
pistol visible, and said, "Nigger, get out of this car."
"If I didn't get out of the car, I figured he was going to shoot me,
so I did," Thomas says. "As soon as I got out of the car, the police took off.
"Of course the crowd started running toward me, and I was a pretty
athletic fellow at that particular time. You know, I knew I could
probably outrun them, so I started to run."
Hank Thomas walked up the steps of the Greyhound bus on a sunny May
4, 1961. As he surveyed its drab, blue-gray interior, the lanky
19-year-old African-American student from Howard University never
imagined he soon would come close to meeting his end on its floor.
He was part of the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE) to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision Boynton v.
Virginia, which made racial segregation illegal in interstate bus
stations, restaurants, bathrooms and on buses. CORE planned to make
sure the court ruling was enforced by riding buses through Virginia,
the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, ending the tour with
a rally in New Orleans.
The Freedom Riders group included seven blacks and six whites. Black
Riders would sit in the front of the bus, white Riders in the back,
and an interracial pair would sit together. A couple of the Riders
would sit in a traditional segregated manner, so they could bail out
any group members who got arrested. They planned to take two buses, a
Greyhound and a Trailways.
Group members had completed a four-day nonviolence training in
Washington, D.C., where they learned how to passively protect
themselves and deal with potential physical altercations. But Thomas
says he wasn't prepared for the violence they encountered.
The Freedom Riders' first stop was Richmond, Va. Some white onlookers
at the bus station jeered at the Riders, but nothing else happened.
The group stopped in six cities before arriving in Charlotte, N.C.,
where black riders walked into the white waiting room and milled
around the station without incident. It was an uneventful stop
until Charles Person decided to get his shoes shined.
"You know, you're sitting on a bus, you're getting on and off the
bus, and your shoes get scuffed up a lot," Person says. "As I was
exiting the restroom, I saw the shoeshine man there. I asked him, you
know, 'Can I get a shoeshine'? He said, well, he couldn't shine my
shoes, and if I persisted I would be arrested."
Getting a shoeshine wasn't one of CORE's planned tests, so Person
dropped the matter, but Joe Perkins, another Freedom Rider, demanded
a shoeshine. Charlotte police officers arrested him.
Things turned violent when the bus stopped in Winnsboro, S.C., and
black Riders John Lewis and Albert Bigelow walked into the white waiting room.
"They were accosted by several white toughs," Person recalls. "They
were punched and they were roughed up pretty good. Before it got too
bad, the local authorities came in and stopped it."
A short time later, Thomas sat down at a whites-only lunch counter at
the bus station and was arrested. When he arrived at the police
station, Thomas says officers led him handcuffed from their car
straight to a jail cell without booking him.
"As I remember, back at the time, the fact that they didn't
fingerprint me, I thought that was weird," he says. Police also
didn't take a mug shot or ask Thomas for any personal information.
There is no record Thomas ever was detained at the Winnsboro Police Department.
That night, Thomas says, police opened his cell and announced they
were going to take him for a ride.
"Where am I going?" Thomas asked.
He says one of the officers replied, "We're going to take you to the
bus station so you can leave." The officers put Thomas in a patrol
car and headed toward the bus station. When Thomas saw the station in
the distance, he knew something was wrong.
"I could see it all the lights in the station were out," Thomas
recalls. "A large crowd of white men were there around the bus
station. It looked as though they'd been having a good time, been
drinking, and I could see a few sticks and everything they had in
their hands." Half a block from the bus station, the officers stopped
the car and told him to get out, Thomas says.
"Well, it looks like the station is closed. When will the next bus
come?" he remembers asking. "I can't get out here. It looks pretty dangerous."
When he refused to leave the safety of the police car, Thomas says
the officer in the passenger's seat turned around, a glint from his
pistol visible, and said, "Nigger, get out of this car."
"If I didn't get out of the car, I figured he was going to shoot me,
so I did," Thomas says. "As soon as I got out of the car, the police took off.
"Of course the crowd started running toward me, and I was a pretty
athletic fellow at that particular time. You know, I knew I could
probably outrun them, so I started to run."
The state trooper finally ordered ambulance drivers to take all the
Riders to a hospital. When they arrived, they found the hospital had
separate emergency rooms for whites and African-Americans. To make
matters worse, a mob had gathered. The white emergency room refused
to treat the blacks, and the white Riders refused to be treated if
their black peers were not. The stalemate was broken after an
official working for U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy had a
coversation with Alabama Gov. John Patterson and all the Freedom
Riders were given medical treatment.
Due to smoke inhalation and injuries from beatings, Thomas says,
these Riders had to abandon the ride.
"None of us were in any physical shape to continue, so CORE decided
to suspend the Freedom Rides not because they were afraid of what
was going to happen to us, we just physically were not able to go
on," Thomas says. He flew back to his home in New York, and the rest
of the Riders on the bombed bus went their separate ways.
The Trailways bus Took a different route than the Greyhound and was
an hour behind schedule in reaching Anniston. When it did arrive, the
bus station was empty.
"Some local people were standing around, milling around, and they
were discussing that the other bus had been burned to the ground,"
Person remembers.
People waiting to get on the same bus as the Riders told the civil
rights advocates they weren't going anywhere until the
African-Americans went to the back of the bus. Person and fellow
black riders Herman Harris, Isaac Reynolds and Ivor Moore refused.
"About eight young white guys got on the bus," Person says. "They
began to throw punches and so forth, and they were beating us pretty
badly, and then two white Riders came from the back James Peck,
journalist and author of Freedom Ride, and Dr. Walter Bergman."
The group shifted its fury to the white Freedom Riders, Person says.
"James was just knocked back, head over heels, and Bergman was
stomped," he says. "They finally just stacked us all in the back of
the bus. They physically threw us in the back of the bus."
The ride to Birmingham was tense, the quiet broken only by an
occasional taunt from the front, Person says. It was mid-afternoon on
Mother's Day, May 14, when the bus arrived at the station. Person and
Peck were the first Riders to step off the bus. When they entered the
terminal, they walked into what amounted to a Klan meeting, Person says.
"The walls were lined with men, most wearing work clothes, khakis and
stuff like that," he says. "And then, as we got near the center of
the waiting room, they all started coming towards us."
The mob descended on the two Riders, hitting them with pipes, sticks
and fists. Peck was forced down on the floor. Person says the next
time he saw Peck, his face was bloody. Person also was beaten, an act
caught on film by Thomas Langston, a photographer for the Birmingham
Post Herald. When the attackers saw Langston's camera flash, they
turned on him.
"That's how I was able to escape," Person says. "I didn't run or
anything. I just walked away." Person, who was bleeding, went outside
and flagged down a municipal bus, which took him to a telephone
booth. From there he called the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who sent
someone to help. Person could not find medical care, however, because
the three black physicians in the Birmingham area refused to treat
him out of fear.
That evening, all the Riders who made it to Birmingham met at
Shuttlesworth's church. The group discussed their next stop,
Montgomery, Ala., and learned no drivers were willing to take the
group because of the previous day's violence. The Alabama governor
also refused to provide police escorts for the buses.
The Freedom Riders decided to fly from Birmingham to Montgomery, but
after they boarded the plane, the pilot announced he had received a
bomb threat and ordered all passengers off the plane. The Riders then
decided to fly directly to New Orleans, and after a bomb threat to
the second plane the group finally made it out of Alabama.
The Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), led by Diane
Nash, didn't want the Freedom Ride to end on such a dismal note. SNCC
recruited new Riders from Tennessee State University and Fisk
University to pick up where the first Riders left off.
Hank Thomas was in New York when he heard new Riders were continuing
the movement. He decided to join them, as did John Lewis, another
original Freedom Rider.
Under pressure from the Kennedy administration, Gov. Patterson
provided a convoy of armed National Guardsmen to escort the bus from
Birmingham to Montgomery on May 24, 1961. At the Mississippi state
line, the guardsmen handed off escort duties to the Mississippi
National Guard and the state police for the remainder of the ride to Jackson.
"I don't remember a large crowd of people at [Jackson], (but) as soon
we entered the bus station, we were arrested," Thomas says. "And they
had the paddy wagons and everything all lined up, so Mississippi was
somewhat determined that they weren't going to repeat what happened
in Alabama."
At his arraignment, Thomas says Jackson Municipal Judge James Spencer
asked how he pleaded to the charge of "breach of peace." Before
Thomas could answer, the judge said, "Don't waste my time. You're guilty."
"That was my taste of Mississippi justice," Thomas says.
Things got worse during booking at the police station when Thomas
answered a white desk sergeant's question with "No" instead of "No,
sir," as blacks were expected to do. "That's when they descended on
me," Thomas says, recalling several officers punching him. Thomas
spent a week in the Hinds County jail before being transported to the
State Penitentiary at Parchman, Miss. During his 35 days at Parchman,
Thomas was placed in solitary confinement twice.
The Freedom Ride inspired many blacks in the rural South to get
involved in the Civil Rights Movement at the grassroots level.
"[The Freedom Ride] renewed my determination," Thomas says. "They
made me more determined than ever to fight for equal rights in this country."
.
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