Fifty years ago, Charles Person, one of the 13 original Congress of Equality Freedom Riders, said he entered the whites-only waiting room of the Trailways Bus terminal in Birmingham to find 20 Ku Klux Klan members waiting for him. The group’s members forced him and a friend out of the room and began to beat them.
Another day, Klansmen came onto Person’s bus, punched him in the head and threw him from his seat to the back of the bus. They also attacked other passengers. But Person and his fellow bus riders were fortunate – Klansmen firebombed and attacked the other bus.
The nonviolent Congress of Equality Freedom Riders nonviolent group traveled across the South on buses as a demonstration to challenge segregation and racism. About 430 people of various races, ages and genders participated in the Freedom Rides that year, eventually causing legislative change.
On the 50th anniversary of the historic first ride, 40 students – possibly including Northwestern students – will have the opportunity to retrace the Freedom Rides as part of an effort by PBS to promote Stanley Nelson’s documentary “Freedom Riders.”
The program was advertised through NU’s Center for Civic Engagement.
Students will travel for free with past Freedom Riders across the South, retracing the original freedom ride. Their journey will kick off in Washington, D.C. on May 6 and end in Jackson, Miss., on May 16.
Riders will attend events along the way, including lectures and film screenings, said Lauren Prestileo, project manager for “American Experience,” the PBS series behind the 2011 Student Freedom Ride.
Students will document their experiences in online blogs and on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, Prestileo said. This public documentation will help spread the message of the Rides and allow people who could not come along to be virtually there, she said.
Almost 1,000 students applied to take the ride, Prestileo said. Applications were due last month, and participants will be announced at the end of this month.
“We’re looking for students who want to make a difference and make change in their communities,” Prestileo said. “We’re not looking at GPAs.”
Medill freshman Gabe Bergado sent in his application last month. He said he was interested in applying because the program merges social media and civil rights.
“The minorities don’t necessarily have the same civil rights other people have,” said Bergado, who identifies as half Mexican, half Filipino and gay. “I wanted to become an advocate of equality for the different spectrums I’m in of race and sexuality.”
Person, who will ride along with students in May, said he also had to apply to be a part of the original Freedom Ride of 1961. He said he was chosen because he was 18, so he was “too young to have any skeletons in the closet.”
Person also said he proved to the organization that he would not turn violent after being arrested at a student sit-in and spending 16 days in solitary confinement for singing too loudly in jail.
Nelson’s film tells the story of the Freedom Rides through the testimony of Riders, government officials and witnesses, according to PBS’s website.
The outreach program for the documentary, including the Student Freedom Ride and film screenings, will cost $1 million, Prestileo said. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave the program a grant, and other funding has been provided by Liberty Mutual, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to the website.
Prestileo said she hopes stories of the original Freedom Riders will inspire students and serve as a catalyst for “harder conversation” when they return to their communities.
The ride will prove to students they can create a better world, Person said.
“If nothing else,” he said, “it will show young people can make a difference and can make a change.”
