The Freedom Rides
Happy Mother’s Day from the Freedom Riders
Pages 85-88, From Black Women Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, by Zita Allen, copyright 1996.
“Then on Mother’s Day, May 14 [1961], their Greyhound bus curved along U. S. Highway 78 and pulled into Anniston, Alabama. An angry mob was waiting armed with blackjacks, iron bars, clubs, and tire chains, with which people smashed windows and slashed tires. Next, they firebombed the bus, which burst into flames, leaving only a charred metal skeleton. Fortunately, the riders escaped the bus. …
The second vehicle, a Trailways bus, pulled into Anniston one hour later. The mob jumped aboard and beat the riders mercilessly, leaving one sixty-one-year-old permanently brain damaged and close to death. This was only the beginning…
Cops didn’t arrive until the group of Ku Klux Klan goons had left. Although on rider had been beaten unconscious and required fifty-three stiches, the group wanted to continue….
…the Freedom Rides continued unabated, pushing deeper and deeper into the South, where the fuzzy link between the Ku Klux Klan, White Citizens Councils, and the established order had allowed a terror to reign. In Mississippi, the riders were arrested and put in Parchment State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison.…When the riders began to sing freedom songs [in prison] (which they did all the time), towels and toothbrushes were confiscated. Even sheets and mattresses were taken away. Some prisoners were subjected to battery operated cattle-prodders and wrist-breakers….
Lucretia Collins, a Tennessee State coed who had left school just weeks before her graduation to join the rides, said ‘We knew we were subject to being killed. This did not matter to us. There was so much at stake, we could not allow the segregations to stop us.’
….Every young woman and man who boarded a Freedom Ride bus knew that they were putting their lives on the line and they did so freely, willingly, and with a degree of enthusiasm that left many in awe. In fact, one of the training questions volunteers were routinely asked was simply, ‘Are you prepared to die?’”
Well, are you?
Pages 85-88, From Black Women Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, by Zita Allen, copyright 1996.
“Then on Mother’s Day, May 14 [1961], their Greyhound bus curved along U. S. Highway 78 and pulled into Anniston, Alabama. An angry mob was waiting armed with blackjacks, iron bars, clubs, and tire chains, with which people smashed windows and slashed tires. Next, they firebombed the bus, which burst into flames, leaving only a charred metal skeleton. Fortunately, the riders escaped the bus. …
The second vehicle, a Trailways bus, pulled into Anniston one hour later. The mob jumped aboard and beat the riders mercilessly, leaving one sixty-one-year-old permanently brain damaged and close to death. This was only the beginning…
Cops didn’t arrive until the group of Ku Klux Klan goons had left. Although on rider had been beaten unconscious and required fifty-three stiches, the group wanted to continue….
…the Freedom Rides continued unabated, pushing deeper and deeper into the South, where the fuzzy link between the Ku Klux Klan, White Citizens Councils, and the established order had allowed a terror to reign. In Mississippi, the riders were arrested and put in Parchment State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison.…When the riders began to sing freedom songs [in prison] (which they did all the time), towels and toothbrushes were confiscated. Even sheets and mattresses were taken away. Some prisoners were subjected to battery operated cattle-prodders and wrist-breakers….
Lucretia Collins, a Tennessee State coed who had left school just weeks before her graduation to join the rides, said ‘We knew we were subject to being killed. This did not matter to us. There was so much at stake, we could not allow the segregations to stop us.’
….Every young woman and man who boarded a Freedom Ride bus knew that they were putting their lives on the line and they did so freely, willingly, and with a degree of enthusiasm that left many in awe. In fact, one of the training questions volunteers were routinely asked was simply, ‘Are you prepared to die?’”
Well, are you?
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