What Do You Learn About The Freedom Rides On The Basis Of The Three Interviews?

Voices of the Freedom Riders

By The Obama Foundation

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, nosotros spoke with veterans of the movement, besides equally author Eric Etheridge, whose book Breach of Peace features a photograph-history of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders and offers a window into what information technology felt like to live through this pivotal moment in history.

Beneath y'all'll find that Q&A, along with excerpts from our conversations with the Liberty Riders themselves. But to sympathise their story and their impact, it's worth revisiting only how extraordinary their journey was.

On May 4, 1961, 13 passengers boarded ii buses in Washington D.C. ticketed to get in xiii days and 1,500 miles later on in New Orleans. It was a diverse group: seven Black and six white; three women and ten men; with backgrounds that included a World State of war II Navy captain, a former stockbroker, a preacher, and a 21-twelvemonth-old seminary student named John Lewis, on the cusp of graduation. There was petty press coverage of their departure from Washington. But in the weeks and months that followed, those riders and their reinforcements would capture the attention of the globe.

All had committed themselves to nonviolent resistance. Their goal was to claiming land laws that enforced segregation in transportation and telephone call upon the federal government to enforce the recent Supreme Court Boynton v. Virginia ruling prohibiting the segregation of interstate travel. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and other advocates had organized the rides to build upon contempo successful boycotts and sit-ins against segregation throughout the South.

Within days of leaving Washington, riders were threatened, arrested, and browbeaten. In Rock Colina, Due south Carolina, John Lewis was assaulted by a dozen young men as he tried to enter a "whites-just" waiting room in the Greyhound final. On a highway outside Anniston, Alabama, a mob of near 200 firebombed i of the buses, only stopping their assail with the arrival of state troopers, who fired warning shots but arrested no one. Soon after, in a Birmingham bus terminal, a mob of Klansmen attacked the 2d group of riders, while members of the Bull Connor-led police department were nowhere to be seen for fifteen minutes post-obit the motorbus' arrival.

Merely as word of the Riders' courage spread, more Americans stood up to take their place. When a fierce mob prevented the riders from leaving Birmingham, Diane Nash, a Fisk Academy student (and native of Chicago) recruited replacements from Nashville. When some other mob attacked those riders in Montgomery, injuring bystanders, journalists, and federal escorts, more than reinforcements arrived and pledged to continue on to Mississippi.

In the months that followed, hundreds of volunteers from across the country traveled to Mississippi to join the try, where nearly were arrested, refused bail, and imprisoned through the summer.

Through their defiance, the Freedom Riders attracted the attending of the Kennedy Administration and as a straight result of their work, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) issued regulations banning segregation in interstate travel that autumn.

As 1 of the kickoff successful examples of mass protests affecting federal policy, their story stands equally a key moment in the Civil Rights motility and a powerful example of the ability ordinary people agree to touch on change.

Obama Foundation: What inspired you to write Breach of Peace?

Eric Etheridge: Well, I'm originally from Mississippi. I've been living in New York for a number of years. I was turning myself into a photographer, and I wanted to practise some kind of project with historical images. I finally remembered that in Mississippi during the Civil Rights menstruation in the '50s and the '60s, there had been a state agency called the Sovereignty Committee. It was charged with doing any and all things necessary to preserve the sovereignty of Mississippi. In other words, to preserve segregation. And, it had been finally extinguished equally an bureau in the '70s, just then there was a long lawsuit about its files, what to do with them. And somewhen they were made public. And so in the early 2000s, I remembered that these files had been made public, and I thought possibly at that place'south some photographs in there that I could do something with.

Eventually I talked to somebody at the country agency and I said, "I'yard looking for photographs, what accept you got?" And she says, "Well, we do have photographs in the files. Well-nigh of them are just mugshots." Kind of with a hint of disappointment in her tone, thinking these are kind of ordinary. We kept talking and I slowly figured out that she in fact had a photograph of every Freedom Passenger who was arrested in the facility in 1961. About 75% of all Freedom Riders who participated in 1961 were arrested and photographed.

And then we take this incredible record, unlike really whatever other major entrada in the modern Civil Rights Movement. I realized that I had the projection that I was looking for. And, so what I resolved to do back in the early 2000s was to attempt to notice every bit many of these people today and become effectually and meet them, and make a new portrait to continue with their mugshot. And, to do an interview about how they got to Mississippi, and what that was like.

"We had integrated Nashville—the theaters, the luncheon counters and all of that. Nosotros were having a picnic, celebrating something when we heard that they were going to give up the freedom rides because they couldn't become a bus out of Birmingham. We stopped our picnic and we had a meeting. We said that the liberty riders must go along. Then we decided nosotros would accept upwardly the Freedom Ride. I got to Mississippi on the second freedom ride. When we stepped off the bus, Helm Ray arrested all of usa."
-Catherine Burks-Brooks

Obama Foundation: To seek out those riders to have contemporary photos and comport interviews must take been challenging. So, how did you accomplish that?

Eric Etheridge: Because they kept expert records, non only did I have everybody'southward photograph, only I had everybody'southward full proper noun – kickoff, eye, final – nascence city, birth date and where they were living in 1961 when they were all arrested. And then that plus the internet, you can get some hits, definitely. I've actually contacted and talked to about 120 to 130 of the riders who were arrested. And I've photographed, I think about 120, but there are just 99 in the book.

Obama Foundation: What was the most surprising thing y'all learned from those interviews yous conducted? Was there a story that really moved you lot?

Eric Etheridge: Over the fourth dimension of talking to the 100-plus riders, I actually got kind of overwhelmed virtually the sort of mosaic of the country that demonstrated, and the variety of people who concluded upward in Mississippi in 1961. You had this astonishing cadre of immature people. Manifestly immature black higher students in the S. They were trained and they'd been arrested numerous times. They knew what to practice, and they were ready to go. And, then you had people from outside the deep S, white, who had never done anything political before. And, yet they were inspired by these photographs they were seeing of violent attacks on the riders that they simply literally got on the bus and went to Mississippi. It was this act of individual conscience.

And, you see that story repeated around the country. In that location was a guy whose family unit got out of Vienna at the very terminal minute. They concluded up growing up in California, and when he saw the photographs from Alabama, he said to his father, "This is what happened to you and us. I'thou non going to stand by this time and let this happen. I'm non going to be a good German."

So it'due south this incredible mosaic of people who were moved, because of their ain personal circumstances. Or, the people who didn't have exactly the aforementioned corporeality at stake, but felt a kinship with those. The stories then all of these different threads from all over the country, and then they all end up in Jackson. It's pretty astonishing.

"That was not my first time being arrested. I'd been arrested a few times before. What practice I retrieve nearly it? Well, the most of import office, to me, was when I went to step down out of the paddy wagon, the white police officer reached out to take my arm and assist me down. At present this would non have happened if I'd been Black. I'm clear on that, but he said, "We don't want anything to happen to y'all, Joan."
– Joan Mulholland

Obama Foundation: Yous had an opportunity to photograph probably one of the most famous Liberty Riders, John Lewis. Can y'all tell me most that experience?

Eric Etheridge: I was very grateful to have Representative Lewis participate. He was very gracious with his time. He had a great view from his role on Capitol Hill, the Capitol Dome in the groundwork. So, I persuaded him to come out on his narrow terrace, and pose for me there. It was really great.

Rep. John Lewis posing on terrace

And, I did an interview with him afterwards the phone. When he started talking and telling a story, whether it was about the Freedom Rides or any of the other stuff he did, his voice was simply so compelling. It was only like, you could not believe it if you'd listen to him.

Obama Foundation: Why was it of import for yous to see this through completion and to get this project out into the world? And, what was the reaction to the book, particularly, in Jackson, Mississippi?

Eric Etheridge: I had kind of stumbled into this dandy fortune, these mugshots. It was important to me that once I plant this project, and I started working on it, I could encounter how it would come together as a book. The more people I met, the more stories I heard, the more history I read, I became much more enlightened of what the rides were, what they represented and how they changed the motion. It's but an amazing history. And so then I became sort of haunted and compelled to desire to keep bothering people with the stories of a nonviolent revolution that succeeded.

I mean, these people were heroes. They went to state of war without guns. They were willing to be hit, and they were striking. They were browbeaten, they were bombed, they were abused in prison in Mississippi. And they won.

They were like, "We're going to open up upward the interstate autobus stations, and train stations, and airports in the S. How can we exist free if we cannot travel freely?" They started in May and by September the Federal Regime had said, "We're now going to enforce no segregation in these facilities." So, information technology was a successful campaign And, the movement showed that not-trigger-happy directly action could be very successful if done the right fashion.

And then, the project for me has been sort of a way back into my own history, and the history of Mississippi, and the country. They parallel each other a lot. It'due south a story that we should all as Americans accept at our fingertips. Nosotros should know this story every bit much as we do other stories of the Alamo, or World War II, D-24-hour interval. This is the story of American freedom and information technology's pretty amazing. So it'south been a very meaningful feel.

"Betwixt the time that I got out of schoolhouse and the time I got arrested, I had applied to be in the armed services, which is basically what Black men did if they wanted to meliorate themselves. When I reported for duty, I was told that they didn't want me in the military because I'd been arrested. It was then I think it began to dawn on me that this was all i matter. Information technology was the fact that the military didn't want me, the stuff that happened with the FBI in Mississippi. I started out appealing to the moral conscience of America, and I realized that that was a myth."
– Luvaghn Brown

Obama Foundation: As we mark the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides this month, how exercise you hope people honor the motion? And, what do you retrieve is the legacy of the Liberty Riders?

Eric Etheridge: I recollect we laurels the legacy of the riders by knowing the history of the rides. Knowing the history of the rides, y'all come away with the lesson that it's not about the leaders, it's near ordinary people. The story of Freedom Rides, it's ordinary people who were willing to stand up upwardly for what they believe in, and to put their bodies on the line. And, these 440 people changed the land in 1961.

I really think the mugshots permit us to know what the Freedom Rides is really. We can see every private and know a lot most a number of them. They're teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers and everyday people. And they really did change American history. I think we come dorsum to John'southward phrase of "Good Trouble," I recollect that remains a standard. That the people have the power to change what they want to change, and change to make things better.