Local Freedom Riders followed a road less traveled
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-met-trice-freedomriders-0215-20100214,0,7571086.column
Choices made nearly 50 years ago made a difference for 2 men, America
Dawn Turner Trice
February 15, 2010
On May 4, 1961, an integrated group of "Freedom Riders" left
Washington heading to Louisiana to challenge segregation throughout
the Deep South. After their bus was firebombed in Alabama with them
inside and the Riders nearly were killed, hundreds of others braved
angry mobs to carry out the mission.
Last week, I met two local men who spent the summer of 1961 on a
journey that would change the course of their lives.
Daniel Stevens, 67, a Hyde Park resident, was arrested on July 7,
1961. He was 19 and a student at a small, predominantly white Quaker
college in Ohio. Having known he was gay since he was 14, Stevens,
who is white, told me that before his ride, "I was in a world that
people made for me. Afterward, I realized I could change the world
and remake my own." You can find his story on "Exploring Race" at
chicagotribune.com/race.
But here is Thomas Armstrong III, 68, a retired transportation
contracts manager for the U.S. Postal Service. A 21-year resident of
Naperville, Armstrong, who's black, was arrested on June 23, 1961,
when he was a 19-yearold student at Tougaloo College in Jackson,
Miss. This is his story in his own words:
At Tougaloo, I was a member of the NAACP, SNCC (Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), which
each had a hand in the Freedom Rides.
The Interstate Commerce Commission had already outlawed segregation
in interstate travel, but the federal government wasn't enforcing it.
After the bus was firebombed in Alabama, a group of Nashville
students continued the ride to Jackson.
We were in Jackson watching intently and praying for the students'
safety. When they arrived at the bus terminal, they were arrested
right as they got off the bus. We knew what jail meant in
Mississippi: You went in, but there was no guarantee that you'd come out.
When some of the Freedom Riders were released, they came to Tougaloo
and asked for support to continue the rides from Jackson to
Louisiana. Two of us joined them. It wasn't a hard decision for me
because the night before, the Mississippi governor had appeared on
television and went on and on about how happy his "niggras" were and
how he had no problems with them. He said it was the outside
agitators causing the problems.
I felt like: "Well, what would you say if there were inside
agitators?" The governor made me so angry because having grown up
here, I knew the condition of blacks in Mississippi. There were
hardly any satisfied black people in Mississippi, not if they were sane.
On June 23, 1961, the two of us went to the Jackson Trailways
station with two tickets to New Orleans. About 20 police officers
stood outside the depot. About 20 more were inside as we walked into
the "Whites Only" waiting room.
The chief of police asked us to leave, saying we were disturbing the
peace. I said, "How?" Other white people were there, and on that
particular day, they actually looked friendly. Everybody was smiling
at us except the police. But he had to uphold the status quo. Not the
law, the status quo.
We were arrested before we got on the bus and were taken to jail. I
spent four days in jail listening to the other Freedom Riders sing
freedom songs and tell stories before the jailer came in and told
me to get out. I had no idea why I was being released. I was prepared
to stay there at least 39 days. According to state law, that was the
length of time they could hold you if you planned to appeal.
I later found out I was released because the NAACP wanted my case to
be part of a class-action desegregation case filed on behalf of
Joseph Broadwater, former president of the Jackson NAACP.
I left Mississippi in 1962 because there were threats to myself and
my family. But until then, I spent the rest of my time making court
appearances and demonstrating in a way that I could be effective, but
not get rearrested.
What did I learn during that time? I learned that freedom is not
just a destination, but a series of stops on a long and winding road.
It wasn't until the landmark legislation Congress passed in 1964 and
1968 prohibiting segregation in public facilities for interstate
travel that many of the Freedom Riders' dreams were fulfilled.
--
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Another look at the Freedom Riders
http://www.sltrib.com/entertainment/ci_14232678
Sundance documentary » Filmmaker Stanley Nelson screens a story about
the civil-rights movement -- before it was told with capital letters.
By Sean P. Means
Updated: 01/21/2010
Some filmmakers are lucky to get into the Sundance Film Festival once
in a decade. Stanley Nelson has done it seven times in 11 years.
Nelson's first documentary, "The Black Press: Soldiers Without
Swords," debuted at Sundance in 1999. Since then, Nelson, 54, has
brought to Park City documentaries about the early black activist
Marcus Garvey (2000), the aftermath of a lynching murder in the deep
South ("The Murder of Emmett Till," 2003), his family's experiences
in a summer beach community ("A Place of Our Own," 2004), the
Jonestown massacre in Guyana (2006), and the 1973 uprising at Wounded
Knee (2009).
This year, Nelson returns with "Freedom Riders," a look back to the
1961 civil-rights protest in which black and white students rode
commercial buses through the South -- and risked their lives -- to
protest segregation. The documentary will appear in early 2011 on the
PBS series "The American Experience."
What was it about this piece of the civil-rights movement that drew
you to making this film?
It's a story that people think they know, or have heard. But it's a
much more complicated and involving story than they know. It's always
fun to work with that time in history, because you've got witnesses
to it who are still around -- and on the edge of them not being
around. It's great to tell those stories while they're still alive
and vibrant.
It's about the civil-rights movement before it was the Civil Rights
Movement, in capital letters. It's about Martin Luther King before he
became THE Martin Luther King, the Kennedys before they became the
icons that they became. I think that it's interesting to look at all
those people in a different way.
What was the No. 1 thing you wanted to accomplish in telling the story?
As a filmmaker, I knew going in that I wanted to try to tell this
story without narration and use as many witnesses as I could. I also
wanted to get as many different points of view. I didn't want it to
be just the point of view of the Freedom Riders. I think that, most
of the time, people make what they feel are rational decisions and
behave rationally. What would make you want to beat somebody almost
to death because they wanted to sit on a bus together? We really
wanted to get at some of the mindsets of people in the South.
How reticent was Gov. John Patterson of Alabama, who oversaw the
state police during the Freedom Rides, to revisit this story?
I think that Gov. Patterson felt that there was some rationality to
what he did and his opinions at the time. He really wanted to talk
about what led him to make the decisions at the time. ... I know that
he's thought a lot about that time, and I think he wanted to talk
about it himself rather than us talk about him.
Was there any part of this story that surprised you?
The piece about Martin Luther King was surprising. Martin Luther King
has become this otherworldly hero, and Martin Luther King in this
story is very, very human. They asked Martin Luther King twice to
become part of the ride, and he refuses twice to join the ride -- and
the second time he does it in a way that causes some animosity with
the Riders.
It's fascinating to see these people -- King, the Riders and the
Kennedys -- on the road to becoming the icons that they would become.
That was one of the real fascinating things, that not only do the
people who were involved change, but the people on the periphery --
the big people -- changed. The Kennedys changed. Martin Luther King
changed. They didn't come out fully emerged as the people we know
them to be. They were also changed by the times and progressed with the times.
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Freedom Riders -- Film Review
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/freedom-riders-film-review-1004061889.story
By John DeFore
January 25, 2010
Bottom Line: Stirring account of a chapter of the civil rights
struggle not yet over-explored by documentarians.
PARK CITY -- Overcoming the limitations of a familiar format thanks
to the sheer heroism of its tale, "Freedom Riders" digs deep into a
critical chapter of the civil rights struggle and brings it to life
in a plain but stirring way. Though produced for PBS and destined for
a good reception there, it might hold its own in a specialty
theatrical run, particularly as we approach the 50th anniversary of
the events chronicled.
The doc is weakest in the first half hour, where it's unclear we'll
be learning anything new: Countless shots of "Whites Only" signs are
accompanied by a soundtrack sometimes approaching "Unsolved
Mysteries" territory, and although hints are dropped about the scope
of what's to come, the film doesn't quite generate an emotional
interest equal to its moment. It's almost as if, like the small group
of black and white young men and women boarding two buses in May of
1961, it expects their symbolic violation of bus segregation laws to
achieve their aims quickly and with minimum fuss.
That changes dramatically when one of those buses is prevented from
reaching its destination. As it recounts the Anniston, Alabama attack
that left one Greyhound bus a burnt husk and its passengers beaten,
the film's account becomes increasingly vivid.
After hearing about the federal intervention required to get those
first protesters to safety, the decision of a second wave of students
to pick up the torch is stirring -- all the more so because these
riders, Southerners from Tennessee, were so clear-eyed about the
physical threat of racism that each signed his or her will before
getting on board.
Interviews with the riders move the action forward, but much of the
film's gravity comes from those who were observers of or reactors to
their acts. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's assistant John
Seigenthaler, a middleman between federal and state authorities who
wound up getting attacked himself, not only explains
behind-the-scenes negotiations but conveys the awed disbelief with
which the world's most powerful men watched the boldness of a few
nameless activists.
Those young idealists have their moments in these new interviews, as
Diane Nash does when she smiles simply and declares, "We were fresh
troops." But overall, the ordinariness of their presentation here may
be what makes their story so powerful.
Venue: Sundance Film Festival
Production company: A Firelight Media Production for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
Director: Stanley Nelson
Screenwriter: Stanley Nelson
Book by Raymond Arsenault
Executive producers: Mark Samels
Producers: Stanley Nelson, Laurens Grant
Director of photography: Robert Shepard
Music: Tom Phillips
Editors: Lewis Erskine, Aljernon Tunsil
Sales Agent: Jim Dunford at WGBH
No MPAA rating, 112 minutes
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Freedom riders get overdue recognition
February 9, 2010
by Tim Wise
As someone who grew up in Nashville, I always wondered why the city
and its schools (from which I graduated in 1986) paid such little
homage to its civil rights legacy.
As students we took field trips to all kinds of places: The Hermitage
(home of the infamous Indian-killer and ethnic "cleanser" Andrew
Jackson), the War Memorial Building, where we could commemorate,
well, war and even the old Satsuma tea room, because someone thought
it was important. But never did we study the local heroes whose
sit-ins helped bring down formal apartheid in this city and nation.
That Nashville still fails to honor these brave men and women 50
years later, in any concerted way, is historically obscene. I hope
the efforts to remember, teach about and carry on the legacy of these
freedom fighters will finally gain the support of this "progressive" city.
During the civil rights struggle, Nashville thought itself quite a
bit better than other Southern cities: less racist, more enlightened
and intellectual. Yet virtually all the places we considered backward
by comparison are years ahead in remembering their roles in the
freedom movement.
Time to catch up.
.
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