NEW YORK—Motivated by widespread racism and with strict adherence to nonviolence, the Freedom Riders helped shape the Civil Rights movements in indelible ways. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the rides.
It began in 1961 with a group of 13 people, white and black, traveling together on buses through segregated states including Missouri and Alabama to confront racist attitudes and mindsets. More groups of activists, dubbed Freedom Riders, joined as the campaign ran into trouble in the Deep South. In the end, there were more than 400 riders.
“They would deliberately violate the segregation laws of the Deep South,” said Raymond Arsenault, author of the book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” in a documentary based on the book. “It was very likely they would get arrested, they might get beaten up, and they might even get killed.”
Nonviolence
“John Moody, one of the riders, eloquently states, ‘I wasn’t nonviolent, but I wasn’t suicidal,’” said one of the original Freedom Riders Lewis Zuchman at an Epoch Times-sponsored forum in New York on Tuesday. “We all understood that you’re not going to fight back against a mob of a thousand people, because when you fight back you incite them.”
Zuchman did not go through nonviolence training, but David Dennis, another Freedom Rider who also spoke during the forum, did.
Though riders viewed nonviolence differently—some as a tactic, some as a philosophy, some with little excitement—all of the riders adhered to it.
“You had very intense workshops in nonviolence and students of Gandhian philosophy,” said Dennis. “You would act it out, you would do skits. You might pretend to sit at a lunch counter, and someone would come out who was white, and they would beat up on you, and some of it was pretty real. Spit on you ... they would do things to provoke you.”
Rider Genevieve Houghton said in the documentary that “with our nonviolent behavior and our goodwill, I thought we could do anything.” She anticipated being arrested, not the brutal beatings and other physical abuse the riders suffered.
In one instance, outside of Anniston, Ala., the tires of one bus went flat. A firebomb was thrown into the bus, severely injuring many riders. Several hundred men gathered nearby and blocked the door, only moving after they thought the bus was about to explode.
One eyewitness who was a young girl then described it as “a scene from hell,” in the documentary.
Disconnect With Younger Generations
The plethora of bus rides set the stage for more well-known moments in the history of the civil rights movement. Yet the younger generation may not comprehend the importance of them.
The disconnect stems from lack of knowledge about history. For example, many youth don’t have any idea what a sit-in is, said Dennis, adding that it is difficult to understand what the environment was like back then.
“How do you get a kid to visualize today that not too many years ago you couldn’t sit at the same place at the lunch counter or drink out of the same water fountain as a white person?” Dennis asked. “A generation of people have not had that exposure to it, and people don’t talk about it.”
Yemi, an environmental scientist who attended the forum, shared her thoughts.
“I do see a disconnect,” said Yemi. “I do think a lot of the younger generation may just not know, and it’s not their fault, because they just haven’t been taught. You can’t blame someone who hasn’t been taught about their history.”
The documentary, which was produced by Laurens Grant, is screening from coast to coast, on college campuses, in private events, and in countries like Morocco, Ecuador, and China.
“You change people through the heart and through love rather than through hate,” concluded Dennis, who worked as a lawyer before becoming a public speaker who promotes innovative education.
