The Story Behind the Freedom Rides | Interview with John Lewis

In the fall of 1960, I heard through some of my friends that had been involved in the sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee, that CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, was sponsoring something called the Freedom Rides. I knew it was something that I had to go on because I traveled through the South and I seen the signs that said "White waiting," "Colored waiting," "White men," "Colored men," "White women," "Colored women," and I wanted to be part of an effort to change it. When I got word that I had been accepted to be part of the Freedom Rides, I was more than excited. I wanted to do what I could to bring down those signs of segregation, those signs, those symbols that told people they could not take a seat any place on a bus or any place on a train.

Or couldn't use any waiting room or any restroom. I was more than happy, more than pleased when I was accepted to go on the Freedom Rides. I wanted to do what I could to strike a blow against discrimination in public transportation. This was a decision of the United States Supreme Court that we were testing, banning discrimination in public transportation. I had seen it, I had felt it in traveling for almost 4 years between Alabama and Tennessee to school. Having to move to the back of the bus, couldn't use the waiting room that I wanted to use, or couldn't use the restroom facilities that I wanted to use. Before 1961, it was not easy for people of color to travel.

As a matter of fact, it was very dangerous. If you got out of place, or got out of what people call out of line, or you got in the way, you could be arrested, jailed, beaten, maybe even killed. Back in 1960, before '61, it was tough. It was difficult. It was hard to face segregation and racial discrimination, to see those signs. That said colored waiting, white waiting, colored men, white men, colored women, white women. To see the signs, to see the symbols of racism, the segregation and discrimination was an affront. Was an insult to our dignity.

We had to change it. We had to change it to make it possible for other people to ride with a sense of dignity and with a sense of pride. When I applied to go on the Freedom Ride in 1960, the fall of 1960, the Freedom Ride was scheduled for 1961, May 1961. I had to write an essay. I didn't know that much about trying to write an application or essay, but I did it. And it read something like, "I'm a senior at American Baptist Theological Seminary and hope to graduate in June. But on the other hand, the Freedom Ride is much more of a challenge to what I believe than a degree. I know that an education is important, and I hope to get one, but at this time, human dignity is the most important thing in my life. This is the most important decision in my whole life, to decide to give up all, if necessary, to the Freedom Ride, that justice and freedom may come to the Deep South." And it was signed, "Your fellow freedom fighter, John R. Lewis.” When I wrote this little essay, I was convinced that I may not return

after going on the Freedom Ride. I knew it was a very dangerous mission to get on a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., and ride into Virginia, to North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, into Mississippi. I never been to Mississippi before. And I remember on that night when we had the last meal at a little Chinese restaurant in Washington, D.C., when we were eating, someone said, "You must eat well. This may be like the Last Supper." On that first day boarding that Greyhound bus to travel through the heart of the Deep South, I felt good. I felt happy. I felt liberated. It was like almost like the first time I got arrested. —when I had been sitting in, in Nashville at a lunch counter.

I felt free. I had never traveled outside of the Deep South, except for once, when I traveled by car from South Alabama to Buffalo. And there were some places you couldn't stop along the way to get something to eat. You couldn't use the restroom. And so this was the first time in my life that I could do something in addition to the sit-ins, in addition to the standing at the theater, to end segregation in public transportation all across the South. I had never been to Washington, D.C. before. I had never seen the United States Capitol before. But to come to Washington, D.C. In May of 1961, 21 years old, to board a Greyhound bus to travel through the South with the possibility of putting my life on the line for something I believe— I was ready.

I was like a soldier in a nonviolent army. I was ready. There come a point with your nonviolent training, through the nonviolent workshops, that you lose all sense of fear. And even you may have some reservation or some hesitation, but you're prepared to go on. And face it. On May 9th, 1961, when my seatmate— white gentleman named Albert Bigelow from Connecticut— the two of us were seated together.

We got off of the bus and approached a waiting room that said "White Waiting." And the moment we started through the door, a group of young white men attacked us, beat us, and left us lying in a pool of blood. And when we were able to get up, local law enforcement individuals came along and said, "Do we want to press charges?" And we said no. We believed in nonviolence. We accepted nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. We didn't strike back. We accepted the blows. Our struggle was not against these young men. Our struggle was against unjust laws, against customs and tradition. After we had been attacked in Rock Hill and suffered the abuse, the

violence, I knew that this was more of the Upper South, and we had to go much farther. We had to make it through Georgia. We had to make it through Alabama. And we had to go into Mississippi. And we had to go on to New Orleans. Somehow, in some way, I felt that it was not going to get any better. They're probably going to get worse. Because along the way, a great many people didn't know about the Freedom Rides. And so after one incident occurred, more people heard about the Freedom Rides, and more people would turn out to a bus station and observe what was happening. And that's exactly what happened. Well, after a particular incident, such as the incident in Rock Hill, and by the time we made it through Georgia, and later in Alabama, the nation as a whole knew about the Freedom Ride.

I had to leave the Freedom Ride in Rock Hill, South Carolina. And I felt really bad leaving my friends, leaving my colleagues, and not being able to go on, on the ride, on into Georgia and into Alabama. It was a very difficult decision to make. But I had been waiting to go to India, or go to East Africa for 2 years. I was very troubled when I heard that the Greyhound bus in Anniston, Alabama had been burned with some of my friends and colleagues. I would have been on that bus. I was one of the original Freedom Riders. So I knew the people. That were on the Greyhound bus. I knew the people that were on the Trailway bus. It was 13 of us, and I knew them all. We— over a period of time, we became like a family.

We were like brothers and sisters, and when something happened to one of us, it happened to each one of us. How did that help your determination to continue the rides? I mean, did that— I guess the real question is, did that play a part in your determination to pick up the rides? What happened in Birmingham and Anniston was a guiding force more than anything else, that we could not let the threat of violence, the beating, the burning, stop a nonviolent campaign. To desegregate public transportation throughout the South. What had happened had a special meaning for me because I was there.

I could have been one of the people sitting out on the highway. I knew these people. I knew that they were committed, deeply committed to the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence. I knew that they were prepared to die for what they believed in.. And we had to pick up where they left off. And that's what I tried to convey to the adults and to the other students in Nashville. The riots have gone on. They've gotten the buses burned in Anniston. The people have been beaten, beaten in Birmingham. They can't get out. They finally decide, we're going to suspend the rides. Tell me about the decision in Nashville to continue the rides. It was a group of students in Nashville that had been part of the sit-in movement, part of the Nashville effort. We met on a Sunday night, and we begged and we pleaded with the adults to make available to us $900, we only needed $900 to buy 10 tickets for 10 individuals to have tickets and food to travel.

'Cause we couldn't allow the threat of violence or violence itself to stop the Freedom Ride. So they made a decision, this adult group made a decision to give us to make available to us the $900. They told us if we go, we are committing suicide. We said, "No, we want to go." And on Wednesday morning, May 17th, 1961, at 6:30 AM, the 10 of us, 7 young men and 3 young women, boarded a Greyhound bus. And we traveled from Nashville, Tennessee to Birmingham, Alabama. And when we arrived at the city limit of Birmingham, Bull Connor, the police commissioner of Birmingham, met the Greyhound bus and boarded the bus, got on the bus, and saw a young Black man and a young white man sitting on the front seat right behind the bus driver.

One of those young people was Jim Zwerg, and the other one was Paul Brooks. He told them to move. They refused to move. He arrested them, took them to the city jail. He ordered the bus driver to drive the bus to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Birmingham. Then Bull Connor asked the other police officials to look at our tickets. And our tickets read, "From Nashville to Birmingham, Birmingham to Montgomery, Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, from Jackson to New Orleans.” He let the regular passengers get off the bus. He kept us on the bus. Then he ordered the local police officials to place newspaper, cardboard, to cover all of the windows, the windshield, the back, on the side, and kept us inside of the bus for more than an hour and a half. As participants in Nashville, we were not afraid of jail.

We would say “jail without bail.” We had perhaps a deeper understanding of the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence more than any other student group in the South because we had a wonderful teacher in a man named Jim Lawson. We had been taught, we had lived the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence. We believed in it. And the students in Nashville, we became the first mass arrests in the sit-in movement when almost 100 of us had been arrested and jailed in 1960. We had been put out on the street to remove snow. From the sidewalks. We were not scared of jail. We would sing a song about Paul and Silas, bound in jail, had no money to go on their bail. Oh, I remember so well when the adults was trying to decide

and trying to make a decision. And they would ask me from time to time, even some of the young people, was, "So what should we do, John?" And I will always come back, "We got to find a way to dramatize it." Dramatize it. And so the only way that we can dramatize it, we must get on a Greyhound bus and pick up where others left off. We have to get on this bus. We have to travel. Make it real. Use the drama. The sit-in, the stand-in at the theater, the Freedom Ride, it was drama. It was used to help educate, sensitize people. Make it real. Make it plain. That's what it was all about. Bull Connor.

Take us to jail on a Wednesday afternoon. We stay in jail all night Wednesday, all day Thursday. Thursday night, we go on a hunger strike. We don't eat anything. We haven't had anything to eat since Tuesday. And then early Friday morning, he come up to our jail cell saying he gonna take us back to Nashville. And we get to the Tennessee-Alabama line, he said, "I'm gonna let you off here," and dropped us off. I really thought when Bull Connor told us, I really did, he told us that he was going to take us back to Nashville, to our college campuses, and I thought he was going to take us back and drop us off.

I remember Catherine Burks saying to him, "When we get to the student union, we will have breakfast. We will have breakfast with you." And we got to the state line of Tennessee, the state line of Alabama. He said, "I'm letting you off here. A bus will be coming along. You can get on a bus. You can get on a train." And dropped us off. And there was one young, Black man, student at Tennessee State, said, "There must be some colored people here someplace." We didn't know what was going to happen. I knew it was not a good sign to be left there at night. It was Klan territory. We started walking. Now, we didn't know what had happened to Jim Zwerg and Paul Brooks, the other two young people who had been arrested. We hadn't communicated with them. We didn't have any way of communicating.

So we came upon an old house that was falling, knocked on the door, said, "We are the Freedom Riders. Please let us in." An elderly Black man came to the door, closed the door back. Knocked again, said, "We're the Freedom Riders. Please let us in." And this elderly woman, the wife of this man, said, "Honey, let them in. Let them in." They brought us in, put us in a back room. There was one or two chairs, a single bed, and most of us took seat on the single bed. Others in a chair, others on the floor. It was the 7 of us, plus later a driver who came to pick us up. But it was eerie, and it was somewhat frightening, because we knew that we were probably endangering the life of these 2 elderly people.

We told this gentleman that we hadn't had anything to eat, that we had been on a hunger strike. We gave him some money. He was so smart and so clever. He jumped in his old truck when daylight came and went around to several different places and brought bread, cold cuts, cheese, bologna, what we call cinnamon rolls or cinabon, and brought it back into this back room, and that's what we had for a meal. We made a call. We made a call to Diane Nash, told her what had happened. She told us that the other two young people, Paul Brooks and Jim Zwerg, had been released from jail, and one of the young students, a young woman by the name of Salynn McCollum, who was a white woman, who was a student at Vanderbilt University, or either Peabody College, that the father flew down from Buffalo, got her out of jail, and took her back.

See, during those days, the jails were segregated. You get arrested together, Black and white, but they put the white prison in one cell block and the Blacks in another one. So we didn't know what had happened to Salynn McCollum. We didn't know what had happened to Jim Zwerg. But later we learned that they had been released from jail, and Salynn had gone back to Nashville. We finally get word that there will be a bus leaving Birmingham for Montgomery. We go out to board the bus, and this white bus driver make an announcement, and he says, "I have only one life to give. I'm not going to give it to CORE or the NAACP." And he refused to drive the bus. So we go back into the station.

We wait for them to call another bus to Montgomery. They refused to drive. So at one time along the way, at some point along the way that night, we stayed in the station throughout the night waiting for a bus. An angry mob marched on the bus station. The police force called out dogs to disperse the mob. Then we understand that Bobby Kennedy had negotiated with the officials of Greyhound to get us out of Birmingham. At one point, Bobby Kennedy was heard to say, "Let me speak to Mr. Greyhound. Don't you have some colored bus drivers there?" Greyhound didn't have any Black bus drivers working in Birmingham, Alabama. But Bobby Kennedy was able to get an agreement that early Saturday morning we would board a Greyhound bus, and there would be on that bus two officials of Greyhound dressed in white shirts, no jacket, sitting on the front seat.

And there would be a plane flying over the bus, and every 15 miles there would be a patrol car. I became the spokesperson for that group. Most of the Freedom Riders had been up all night, so most of the people got on the bus, they went to sleep. And as we traveled the highway between Birmingham and Montgomery, you could see a patrol car, and every so often you could see the plane. And the moment we arrived at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Montgomery. The patrol car disappeared. There was no sign of police protection. And we started down the steps of the bus. I was standing with Jim Zwerg, who was my seatmate. We were the first two off the bus. We were riding on the front seat. When the bus pulled in and we started down the steps, I started down the steps with Jim Zwerg.

An angry mob that grew to several hundred just came out of nowhere. Women, men, young people with baseball bats, with chains, with lead pipes. Wooden crates, anything that could be used as a weapon, start beating members of the media. If you had a camera, would just beat you. Then they turned on us, and I was hit in the head with a wooden crate, left bloody, unconscious on the streets in Montgomery. And I remember someone from the Attorney General's office coming up while I was laying down, tried to read an injunction to me prohibiting interracial groups from traveling through the state of Alabama. The last thing I recall, standing with Jim Zwerg, we both was bloody. Our clothes was soaked in blood.

So as you're lying there half unconscious, uh, the Attorney General of Alabama comes up and reads you an injunction. Let me do that again. As I was lying there on, on the ground, the Attorney General come up and read an injunction that some judge in Alabama had issued prohibiting interracial groups from traveling through the state of Alabama by way of public transportation. The next thing I knew, I had been transferred to a local physician's office where my head was patched up and bandages were put on my head. It looked like a Red Cross symbol. It's okay. We were an interracial group.

There were young white men and women traveling with us. And they thought for some reason by traveling together, using public transportation, that we were going to inflame the good citizens of Alabama. The governor of Alabama, a man by the name of John Patterson at the time, had said to a representative of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy that he was not going to be nursemaids and try to protect us. And there was a public safety director for the state of Alabama named Floyd Mann saying, "Governor, you give me the power. You give me the authority, and I will protect these young people. I will protect them." The day while we were being beaten, Floyd Mann, the public safety director came and stood on the scene and held his gun in the air and said, "There will be no killing here today. There'll be no killing here today," and dispersed the mob. He later was fired. John Patterson and the state of Alabama sanctioned the violence

against the Freedom Riders. They knew there were Klan elements between Birmingham and Montgomery. They knew there were Klan element in Anniston that burned the bus, the people who had beaten people on the Trailway bus in Birmingham. They led us into a mob. That was a conspiracy on the part of the state of Alabama. And Governor Patterson was a part of it. During the mass meeting, a day after the Freedom Riders arrived in Montgomery, an angry mob gathered at the First Baptist Church.

There were hundreds and thousands of people inside of the church. Waiting to greet and salute and support those of us on the Freedom Ride. And Dr. King felt it was his call and his obligation as the leader of the movement to do what he could to calm the crowd. But an angry white group started toward the church. And when they got near the church, they started burning cars, throwing stink bombs into the church. Martin Luther King Jr. went down into the basement of the church, made a call to Robert Kennedy, and told him, "We have a dangerous situation here,” that he had to act. He had to do something. And Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, communicated it to his brother, President Kennedy. And that evening, Dr. King came back up to the pulpit of the church and said he had spoken to the president— rather, to the Attorney General— and that the Attorney General said he would be speaking to the president.

He told everybody to be orderly, that we could not engage in violence. And I remember Fred Shuttlesworth. This unbelievable, brave, courageous minister, who was a leader in Birmingham, coming, taking the pulpit and said, "The man that is more responsible for what is going on in Alabama, the violence against the Freedom Riders, is Governor John Patterson." And a few minutes later, the general of the Alabama National Guard came in and took over the meeting and said essentially what Dr. King said. It was a very dangerous, intense situation inside and outside. He ordered everybody to remain in the church. So we stayed in the church all night, all night, all of us. All of the Freedom Riders was in the choir stand. They disguised us as members of the choir.

Because the representative of the Justice Department didn't want the local authority from Alabama to interview us before the FBI did. Reverend Shuttlesworth felt that Governor Patterson had the power, had the authority to stop the violence on the part of the Klan element in Montgomery, in Birmingham, in Anniston, and all along the way. When he ran for governor, he had been supported by the Klan. He had influence with them, and they had influence with him. If it hadn't been for President Kennedy federalizing the Alabama National Guard, putting the city of Montgomery under martial law, some of us, or many of us, would have been killed that night. The mood in the church that night, it was tense, but at the same time,

it was one of hope. People were singing, praying. It was a sense of faith that it was all going to work out. That somehow there's this feeling that we're in the house of the Lord and it's going to be all right. Because many of these people, they came through the bus boycott. Their churches had been bombed. Their homes had been bombed. They've been down this road before. They had been tested. They were ready. They were not as scared or frightened as they would have been in some communities and neighborhoods going through this the first time. I remember that evening, or early that morning, when the general of the National Guard made a decision to transfer us to one home, including Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy.

And all of the Freedom Riders. And when I look back, it was a brave and courageous Black family. The owner of this home had been a Tuskegee Airman named Dean Harris. He was a pharmacist. We all stayed at his home. People rejoice.

People express a sense of relief and happiness because they knew that the federal government has spoken from Washington. They knew that for the first time the Kennedy administration, President Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, had identified with their side, with the side of civil rights. They also knew that they would be safe. We had several discussions, several meetings with Dr. King and James Farmer, Fred Shuttlesworth, and many others. And we wanted— we wanted to continue the ride. And we wanted Dr. King to go on the ride.

There's a great photograph, a great picture, when we boarded the bus to leave the city of Montgomery. And we wanted Dr. King to be with us, but he felt he could not go because he had a charge back in Georgia, back in Atlanta, and to get arrested and go to jail again, it would revoke his bail. But he wanted to identify with the ride. There's a picture of him shaking hands with one of the riders through the window of a bus as the bus pulled out from Montgomery to go to Jackson, Mississippi. Many of the young people, many of us were disappointed

that Dr. King made the decision not to go on the ride, 'cause we wanted him to go with us. Now, I had never been to Mississippi before. Alabama was one thing, Georgia something else, but going to Mississippi? We knew what happened to Emmett Till. Some of us were about the same age that Emmett Till would have been. And we thought we needed the protection. We needed an internationally known spokesperson, a leader like Dr. King, to be with us. But we used to sing a song, "If you don't go, don't hinder me. I'm going anyhow.” So we were determined to go. And we got on that Greyhound bus, and we traveled from Montgomery to Jackson.

There was some young people within the movement on the Freedom Ride, some SNCC people, started referring to Dr. King as "the Lord," that he was bigger than any of us. And he was the Lord. I never called him the Lord because I had so much respect and affection and love for the man that I refused to call him the Lord. That he was the Lord. He was, he was, he was higher. He was powerful. He was beyond us. He was... Yes. Facetious, sarcastic, yes. When we left the Montgomery bus station, there was National Guard soldiers on the

bus, riding with us, in front of the bus, leading us. There were National Guard individuals behind the bus, and when we got to the Mississippi state line, the Mississippi National Guard picked us up. Some got on the bus, some behind the bus, some in front of the bus, and took us to Jackson, to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Jackson. You get to Jackson. You go into the so-called white waiting room, marked white waiting. Most of the Black Freedom Riders would go into the so-called white waiting room. The so-called white Freedom Riders would go into the so-called colored waiting room. And sometimes it would be an integrated group. We would mix each other, mix 'em up. We get inside, there was a captain. His name was Ray, Captain Ray.

And Captain Ray would say one word, or maybe two words. He would say, "Move on." You can be trying to get something to eat at a lunch counter. You weren't going to be served, but you'd go and take a seat at a lunch counter. Or maybe you would go to a shoeshine stand and try to get a shoeshine. They weren't going to shine your shoes. Or you would go to the restroom and try to use the restroom, and Captain Ray would be with you every moment, every— moment of the way. And the only words he would use, he would say, "Move on." In the next breath, he would say, "You're under arrest." And he arrested all of us and took us to the city jail in Jackson. And during the summer of 1961, throughout that period, people kept coming to Jackson. By way of bus, by way of train. We filled the city jail, then they would take us to the county jail. And when the county jail was full, early one morning, they decided to take the first group down to the state penitentiary at Parchman.

I was in the very first group, walking with James Farmer and others. You saw this line of people going down to Parchman. I'd never been to Mississippi before. I'd never been to the Delta of Mississippi. It was eerie. They took us to the maximum security unit of Parchman State Penitentiary, where you see all of this barbed wire. They stopped this van with with Black and white males, 'cause the jails are segregated. They don't put you in the same jail cell, not in the same unit, but they had us all together. And you get to the prison, a guard get out with his gun, his rifle drawn, and he says something like, "Sing your goddamn freedom songs now. We have niggers here that would beat you up or eat you up, sing your goddamn freedom songs now."

They led us into a hallway. They had all of us to strip naked. Had all these guys standing there without any clothing on, which attempt to dehumanize us. Or rob of any sense of dignity or any sense of pride. We stood there for more than 45 minutes, maybe almost an hour. Then they led us to a shower. And if you— in twos— and if you had any facial hair, a mustache, a beard, they would give you a razor while you were taking your shower, and you had to shave the hair off of you. And after you finished your shower and your shaving, they led us in twos to a jail cell without any clothing. The rifles drawn on us. There were several men with rifles by this time, and we stayed in the cells for more than an hour and a half, maybe 2 hours.

Then they came and gave us a pair of Mississippi State Penitentiary shorts and an undershirt. That's what we kept on. Parchman became a way out, not just a way in. We was not just locked up, and we had moments there to learn, to teach each other the way of nonviolence, the way of love, the way of peace, the way of nonviolent direct action.

They refused to provide us with books and papers, but I do remember being there, that the man came by one day from the Salvation Army, and he gave us all a Bible. It was the Psalms and the New Testament. I remember one of my old schoolmates wrote in the in the Bible given to John Robert Lewis by a man from the Salvation Army on June something, 1961. We read the Bible, but we talked about Gandhi and his campaign in South Africa, his campaign to liberate India, from the British. We talked about thorough and civil disobedience, the great religions of the world, about what Dr. King had been all about, and what we were going to do when we got out to engage in a massive campaign to get people registered to vote.

We learned as much as we possibly could about the state of Mississippi, sharing ideas, sharing feelings. 'Cause there was lawyers, there was ministers, there were rabbis, and teachers with all type of background, and students from all over America that came to go on the Freedom Ride. So we learned from each other. It did become a university. And because of the Freedom Ride, we were prepared to not just liberate Mississippi but liberate the whole South. The state of Mississippi in 1961 had a Black voting age population of more than 450,000, and only about 16,000 were registered to vote. And we wanted to do something about it. Parchman was known as a land that no man wanted to travel to.

It was known as a vicious and not friendly place for people. That they would send people out to do hard hard, bright, back-breaking work in the fields. But they were afraid to send us out, to integrate us, to let us mingle with the regular prisoners. So they kept us in. And one Sunday morning, Ross Barnett, the governor of Mississippi at the time, and several other white officials came by like they were touring us. It was almost like we were in a zoo or something. And they would come in and just peep at us. We would sing our freedom songs. We would conduct church. We would pray prayers.

We were determined that we weren't going to let anything get us down. We kept the faith. We kept our eyes on the prize, and we would not give up, and they would not break our spirit. Singing, the music, became a powerful nonviolent instrument. A powerful nonviolent tool. A powerful nonviolent weapon. And often said, without music, Without the singing, we would have lost a sense of solidarity. It gave us hope in a time of hopelessness.

It brought us together. And you can hear the young women singing, and then we would start singing back to them. Someone would throw out a verse. Someone would improvise. And it created an unbelievable sense, "Yes, we will make it. Yes, we will survive." And that nothing, but nothing, was going to stop this movement. And sometimes you would hear people singing, and it seemed like the music was going to just shake the jail. When you were marching through the streets of Nashville, through the streets of Birmingham or Selma or Albany, Georgia, or Atlanta. It was not just singing outside, but also inside. And I think the music, the words, had a profound impact on the guards, on the jailers.

I think it helped change some of these men. The Freedom Rides of 1961 desegregated public transportation all across the American South. In a very short time, by the fall of 1961, those signs that said "White waiting," "Colored waiting," "White men," "Colored men," "White women," "Colored women," those signs came tumbling down.

It ended, forever, segregation in public transportation. So today, when a young child or some older person get on a bus and travel from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi, or from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, they would not see those signs. Those signs are gone, and they will not return. The only place they will see those signs would be in a museum, in a book, or on a video. You can sit any place you want to and travel any place you want to go, as long as you have the money to pay for the ticket. But it also, it carried the movement. It took the civil rights movement off the college campuses, took it off out of the large cities and took it to the small towns and rural communities.

And it also changed the people that were on the Freedom Ride. The people that took a seat on these buses, that went to jail in Jackson, that went to Parchman, they were never the same. The Freedom Riders became change agents, or agents of change. They left Mississippi. Many did. Some went back. They became activists for voter registration, political organizing.

Some went to Southwest Georgia and created a movement. Others went to Selma, Alabama. Some went to North Carolina and South Carolina and created movements. And today there's a whole cadre of people that went out and taught others to be agents of change. It came from the Freedom Rides, because people saw what they could do in such a short time, that they can bring about victories. And they felt they could get other people to be participant in an effort to bring about victory, to bring about social change, political change.