A Great Generation

By Dr. Wornie Reed

In these troubled times, I often reflect on a truly great generation, the one that fought for racial justice in 1961.

This generation fought a war at home – against racial apartheid, a term I use deliberately because “racial segregation” seems understated.

I specifically recall the “Freedom Rides,” led by James Farmer and CORE, when 13 people – seven Blacks, including John Lewis, and six whites – rode buses through the South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals.

Few, if any, places in the South obeyed the Supreme Court’s ruling against segregation. The Freedom Riders faced arrest by police and horrific mob violence in South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, drawing international attention to the civil rights movement.

On May 14 in Montgomery and Anniston, Alabama, attacks on buses and passengers destroyed a bus and sent several Freedom Riders to the hospital.

After widespread violence, CORE officials could not find a bus driver willing to transport the integrated group and decided to abandon the Freedom Rides. However, 21-year-old Diane Nash, an SNCC activist, organized 10 Nashville students to continue the rides.

Farmer responded by warning her that it was too dangerous. Nash, one of the greatest leaders of this great generation, replied, “We fully realize that, but we can’t let them stop us with violence. If we do, the Movement will be dead.” Farmer tentatively agreed.

As violence escalated, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy sent John Seigenthaler to Birmingham to assess the situation and urge the youth to abandon their plans to continue the bus rides: “Do they know they can be killed?” When Seigenthaler warned Nash of this danger, she replied, “Sir, each of us has made out our last will and testament.”

Attorney General Kennedy negotiated with Alabama’s governor and bus companies to secure a driver and state protection. The rides resumed on May 24, departing Birmingham under police escort.

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Upon arriving at the Jackson, Mississippi bus terminal and attempting to use the restrooms and lunch counters, they were arrested, jailed, and some were beaten. By then, the beatings and the arrests had been shown on television around the country, provoking more of this great generation – whites as well as Blacks – to continue the Freedom Rides.

Some 600 people came in waves after waves of Freedom Rides through the summer. More than 40 different tests of the racial segregation rules were made, provoking more than 300 arrests for “inflammatory traveling.”

When jails filled, police sent male and female Freedom Riders to the infamous Parchman Prison.

Were they afraid? Yes. Did it stop them? No.

Then why did they come, especially from the North?

– Somewhere, they had read that all men are created equal.

– Somewhere they had read that each person is endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

And some followed Frederick Douglass’ words: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” So, they joined the struggle, and they won. In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.

I think of this great generation today as we chronicle the ripping away of society’s fabric. Some of these same people are currently in action, resisting these destructive moves. Though the hair might be thin and grey, they remember one of their earliest lessons – “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

So, when the masked Gestapo-like storm troopers in the name of immigration control come for their tax-paying good citizen neighbors, they resist.

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They resist when ICE agents use brutal force, racially profile, and violate rights as they pursue peaceful people at workplaces, homes, on city streets, in malls, and outside churches.

Just as over 60 years ago, this generation currently leads us in confronting racial injustice – and we will be the better for it.