http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/a_fresh_look_at_the_faces_of_t.html
By Melinda Johnson
February 19, 2010
From his front seat on a Centro bus, the Rev. LeRoy Glenn Wright
witnesses the erosion of major strides in civil rights history as
young African-Americans walk down the aisle.
"I'm really discouraged people continue to go to the back of the bus.
They don't realize the sacrifices and what has happened so they can
get on the bus."
Wright knows of the sacrifices made for African-Americans. As a young
man in Nashville, he participated in nonviolent protests, stand-ins
at the Paramount movie theater and sit-ins at Crystal Hamburger chain
and Rexall drug stores to desegregate public places. He was one of
the first Freedom Riders, a group of black and white men and women of
all ages, from across the country, who led a civil rights protest in
the summer of 1961.
The Freedom Riders were determined to expose southern states'
resistance to a 1960 Supreme Court ruling that desegregated
facilities in bus and train stations.
Freedom Riders entered the white- and colored-only restrooms, waiting
rooms and restaurants of Trailways and Greyhound bus stations in the
South. Individuals were verbally taunted and physically threatened as
they stepped off buses in Jackson, Miss. Riders were arrested after
entering the waiting rooms. In Alabama, a Greyhound bus was
firebombed in Anniston and riders beaten in Birmingham.
Video: Wright discusses his experiences as a Freedom Rider [see URL]
A resident of Syracuse since 1962, Wright will revisit his past at
ArtRage Gallery on Sunday. His appearance is part of Eric Etheridge's
exhibition, "Breach of Peace," at the Hawley Avenue gallery. The
exhibition features mug shots of the riders paired with Etheridge's
recent photographs of some of the Freedom Riders he located. The
photos are a small sample of the 100 portraits Etheridge has taken
and are included in his book, also titled "Breach of Peace: Portraits
of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders."
Etheridge had been in search of Wright for this project. He learned
Wright was living in Syracuse only after Rose Viviano, director at
ArtRage Gallery, organized the exhibition. Etheridge will travel to
Syracuse to interview and photograph Wright on Sunday at the gallery.
He also will speak and sign his book. On Monday, Etheridge will speak
at Onondaga Community College.
Wright, an associate pastor at St. Luke Missionary Baptist in
Syracuse, surely will recount the experiences of May 24, 1961. He was
one of 15 Freedom Riders on a Greyhound bus traveling from
Montgomery, Ala., to Jackson, Miss. Another 12 Freedom Riders were on
a Trailways bus on the same day, also destined for Jackson.
At the time, Wright was a 19-year-old student at Fisk University in
Nashville. He never considered that his activism might put his life at risk.
"Being I was young, it was like exciting," says Wright in his low,
gravelly voice. "We knew there were dangers, but we didn't dwell on
them. If you dwell on them, you wouldn't have done them."
He says Mississippi state police escorted his bus to Jackson. In
hindsight, the mood on the bus seems surprising. "It was jolly
because you had reporters there interviewing everybody," says Wright,
who is now 68 years old.
The riders stepped off the bus in Jackson, met by more public
scrutiny. "Pandemonium was there. I mean there was pandemonium. There
were all kind of news media and photographers, all over the place.
And they were hanging from the balconies," he laughs.
Once off the bus, riders proceeded to the main waiting room for
whites, now filled with a mix of races.
"On our part it was nonviolent. But, then we received a welcome of
violence," he says of the group's arrival in Jackson.
After police asked and the black and white Freedom Riders refused to
leave, the group was arrested on charges of "breach of peace" and
loaded into police wagons. Mug shots, the impetus for the book and
exhibition, were taken.
The 27 riders declined bail, were tried and convicted of breach of
the peace in Jackson Police Court. They were fined $200 and sentenced
to 60 days in jail. Municipal Court Judge James L. Spencer suspended
that 60-day jail sentence. However, Wright says, the riders were
forced to serve some jail time to cover the fine and court costs. He
spent three weeks in Hinds County Jail and hours at a county penal
farm in Raymond, Miss. There, Wright says, some were beaten, others
verbally threatened and coerced to be submissive during
"orientation." It was a test of wills. Wright says he refused to
capitulate to the practice of that time that blacks always were to
answer whites with a "Yes, sir" or "No, sir."
Etheridge has heard stories like Wright's from more than 100 of the
328 Freedom Riders he has contacted since 2005. He hopes to speak
with and photograph every one from that movement, although many are
no longer living.
First a magazine editor in New York City and later a fledgling
photographer, Etheridge was looking for a project when he learned the
files of the controversial Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission
("segregation watchdog") had been posted online. In 2004, he found
the files included the complete set of mug shots of the Freedom
Riders. It "was pretty amazing," Etheridge says during a phone
interview while waiting to board a plane in Columbus, Ohio.
"It became a much richer project than I could imagine in the
beginning, just, in part, to hear everybody's story of how they were
raised and how they ended up in Mississippi."
For Etheridge, life began in Carthage, Miss., 60 miles north of
Jackson. During the summer of the Freedom Rides, he was 4 years old.
"I probably didn't know much more about the Freedom Rides when I
started on this than the average person."
The rides and the civil rights legislation (Civil Rights Act of 1964
and Voting Rights Act of 1965) are a "remarkable story," he says.
"It's a way for me to know Mississippi history, in particular, much
more than I knew about the movement there and various facets of it.
You know, sort of the biggest lesson was really having a much deeper
understanding of nonviolence and the role it played ..."
Etheridge says people think segregation occurred just in the 1950s
and 1960s, but it had been a "pattern of control" for 250 to 300 years.
"The enormity of that was something that I had just never grappled
with. And the use of the nonviolence by the kids, by the students in
the movement, and others sort of break through and finally end that
reign of violence and terror that had been used to keep blacks in
their place, (that) was pretty amazing."
It's also an amazing coincidence that the photographer should locate
Wright with this exhibit. When told of Etheridge's excitement of
locating him, Wright says, "I didn't know I was lost."
But, Etheridge and Wright will find themselves together Sunday,
adding a new chapter to the civil rights record.
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