Mississippi Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, thirteen citizens boarded a bus in D.C. bound for Mississippi
and Louisiana as a racially integrated group. Along the way they became
more than one bus, and several hundred people. Recently many of the group
came together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their struggle.
When they arrived at segregated bus stations in 1961 they were jailed. So many of them gave testimonials I found unbelievable because they were jailed for thirty days!
I was stunned by many things as I viewed the proceedings on C-span.
One astounding thing was that Governor Haille Barber gave a speech which
included an apology for the jailings! When he got to the podium I was certain
he would say it wasn't so bad to be jailed because each jail presented
as "A Clean Well Lit Place".
He didn't say anything even close to being so backward. He was a complete,
polite, respectful human. Haille Barber? The same man who left his state
just as the president arrived there to talk to officials about thier
need relative the gushing oil BP had slicked onto, their coastline was
well-mannered and gracious during a freedom riders celebration!
Continually throughout the celebration he referred to his wife and himself as a
couple doing public service - never himself alone.
A man couldn't be more gracious that that.
The only upsetting thing I heard him say was that the celebration could not have
happened without the corporate support it got. He named everyone of the
coporations. Please.
The freedom riders asked some of their group to speak individually.
They were particularly proud that their desegregation sacrifices led to successes
such as Judge Ruben Anderson's position on the Mississippi Supreme Court, to
Judge Carlton Reed's position in the Federal Distict Courts, and to
Congressman Bennie Thompson who reccommended Judge Reed.
Mention was made of the exceptional leadership of Congressman John Lewis, who was
one of the most ardent starting leaders of C.O.R.E.
Sonny Montgomery was mentioned as Mr. Lewis' arresting officer at one point. Later
the two served together in Congress.
One woman came to the podium who seemed to be Chinese. She was a young college student like the rest of the freedom riders fifty years ago. She looked Chinese
by virtue of her stature and coloring. She told the crowd the officials who
greeted her when she got off the integrated bus she rode into the south back then
informed her she was not black. Everyone laughed as she kept repeating to them
to counter their assertions, that she indeed was definitely black, or whatever term
people were using then for those of African heritage.
All the freedom riders who spoke stressed the diversity among them as regards
whites, blacks, and persons of differing religions.
The most stunning report came from a lady named Claire O'Connor.
She looked very Irish to me. She said people where she gave talks always asked her
why she did it.
Spike Lee would have loved her answer. She said she was raised to understand that
if the promise of forty acres and a mule had been honored, our country would be truly
unable to be challenged in any field right now. She said her parents taught her
that cancer would likely have been cured in the twentieth century, and many more
important world-altering achievements would have been given the world in the first
one hundred years after the civil war. It was just a matter, she exclaimed, of how
much she loved her country. That is why she had become a freedom rider.
I haven't heard of Civil War aftermath spoken of in that way before. Maybe I haven't
even thought of it in exactly that way. But when I do stop to think of it now, courtesy of Ms. O'Connor, I realize hundereds of billions of dollars have been spent
in these years since the Emancipation Proclamation, to keep black people from
achievemnet. What would that have achievement have rendered after all?