♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Hi, and welcome to "Connections."

I'm P.A.

Bennett.

Would you have gotten on the bus, a bus headed toward a dangerous South for Black people in 1961?

Hundreds of young Black and White people got on buses and trains in an effort to bring attention to the fact that even though it was against the law, Blacks were still forced to sit in the back on buses and trains, a vivid example of the many Jim Crow laws still in effect in the South.

They called themselves the Freedom Riders, and what they endured is an ugly scar on this nation's history.

>> Male speaker: I was like a soldier in a nonviolent army.

>> Male speaker: We talk about it here as separation of the races.

>> Male speaker: Just for sittin' on the front of a bus, people would try to burn you to death.

>> I'll take beatings.

I'm willing to accept that.

>> Male speaker: Your parents tell you, don't start something that you can't finish.

Finish it!

♪ >> Male speaker: "I wish to apply for acceptant as a participant in cause Freedom Ride."

1961.

>> Female speaker: "To travel via bus from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana, and to test and challenge segregated--" >> "...facilities en route.

I understand that I should be participating in a nonviolent protest--" >> Male speaker: "...against racial discrimination, that arrests or personal injury to me might result."

♪ >> Male speaker: The Freedom Rides of 1961 were a simple but daring plan.

The Congress of Racial Equality came up with the idea to put Blacks and Whites in small groups on commercial buses.

They would deliberately violate the segregation laws of the Deep South.

>> We were to go through various parts of the South, gradually going deeper and deeper, six of us on a Trailways bus and six of us on the Greyhound bus, and see whether places were segregated, whether people were being served when they went to get something to eat or buy a ticket or use the restrooms.

♪ >> Male speaker: One of the major thrusts of the Freedom Ride was to get the movement into the Deep South.

Most of the action up till this time had been in the upper South or in the North, and one of the ideas here was to go into the deepest South.

We were hoping this would start a national movement.

♪ >> Male speaker: CORE had this set itinerary.

They anticipated this would be a two-week trip, that it would culminate down in New Orleans with a real celebration on the anniversary of the Brown versus Board of Education decision.

And there's almost an element of naivety attached to it, how easily they thought it would go.

♪ >> "I'm a senior at American Baptist Theological Seminary and hope to graduate in June.

I know that an education is important, and I hope to get one.

But at this time, human dignity is a most important thing in my life, that justice and freedom might come to the Deep South.

>> The Freedom Riders faced people who cared nothing about killing them.

White Southerners cursed them, beat them, and tried to burn them.

How did they take it without physically fighting back?

♪ >> P.A.

: The Freedom Riders were able to bear the extreme abuse heaped on them by the violent mobs in the Southern states because those young people were trained in nonviolence by people like James T. McCain, Sr. from Sumter.

"New Orleans, Louisiana.

Nine Freedom Riders left this morning by train for Jackson, Mississippi.

Arrested for attempting to use facilities.

Four White girls, one negro girl, and four negro men."

Mr. McCain wrote those words in his diary in 1961.

He shared those tumultuous times with his diary, but not his children.

>> Well, I found out more about what Daddy was doing in the civil rights movement after he died than when he was living.

He never, ever talked about it, because those were violent times, and there were threats against the family, and he didn't want any part of the notoriety, so to speak.

So he kept in the background.

He never wanted his face in front of things, because he was always concerned about the safety of his family.

I know that Daddy was involved with and a major part of training students in being nonviolent, and he was a big part of selecting those as well.

He had to go through an extensive training process, and I guess they checked their mentality as far as their capacity to take a lot of punishment and verbal abuse, and physical abuse as well.

And those that had a propensity to retaliate were not selected to be a part of the various movements.

Now, there were other things that they could be involved in, but as far as actually being on the front line of the integration process, they had to be completely nonviolent.

>> P.A.

: James T. McCain, Sr. died in Sumter in 2003, a quiet, nonviolent warrior.

His was simply a long life of service.

>> This is the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, and to commemorate, the Rides are being reenacted.

♪ ♪ ♪ >> P.A.

: The bus pulled into Rock Hill, South Carolina, "Freedom Riders" boldly emblazoned on its side.

There was no such sign 50 years ago when Black and White people took to buses and trains to travel through the Jim Crow South.

Those Freedom Riders carried the banner in their hearts and in their intentions.

♪ >> As part of the student sit-in group, our approach was, if the call went out, to send more people.

We went, if one person fell by the wayside and couldn't continue, others would step up to take their place.

I was there because I was a White Southerner, and I felt we needed to put our own house in order and live up to the best of what we preached but weren't practicing.

>> P.A.

: The young people on this bus can't even imagine the cruelty of that time.

They could only honor the courage of the Freedom Riders 50 years ago.

>> I think it's very important that we understand this history.

It was a profound moment in American history during the civil rights movement.

They had to overcome a lot as an African-American race, and I think the Freedom Rides definitely shows that this was a struggle that required persistence and perseverance.

I think young people today can learn from that experience in saying that, if I'm going to be dedicated to something, if I'm gonna have a passion about it, remain committed to that.

And that is something that the Freedom Riders definitely demonstrated.

>> P.A.

: There were about 40 young people, most college students, along with four of the original Freedom Riders participating in the reenactment.

The young people had powerful reactions to the experience.

>> Well, first of all, I've learned that America has great capacity for hate and for inflicting pain and for spite.

And that really disturbed me, in seeing the actual signs, colored and White.

I think that's my history as well.

I don't really know how to incorporate that.

But I have also learned the humanity of my heroes, and that's amazing to me, because I think you could fully appreciate and experience when you realize that they are incredibly complex human beings.

>> P.A.

: Also on the bus was Raymond Arsenault, author of the book "Freedom Riders" on which much of the American Experience PBS documentary of the same name was based.

>> So often I think we look at the civil rights movement as a charismatically led top-down movement, but it was really a bottom-up movement.

These were people who reached inside themselves, found that moral and physical courage to get on those buses, to put their lives on the line.

Most of those stories have never been told before.

There were a lot of heroes, and that ordinary people were out there doing extraordinary things.

♪ >> The Freedom Rides were a pivotal point in the civil rights struggle, so why do we know so little about them?

With us to answer that question and many more are Dr. Patricia Sullivan.

Dr. Sullivan is professor of history at the University of South Carolina.

Also with us, bishop Fred James.

Bishop James is a retired bishop of the AME church.

And Dr. Kathy Forde.

Dr. Forde is an assistant professor of electronics and print journalism, also at USC.

Thank you very much for being with us this afternoon.

And I asked that question, why don't we know more about the Freedom Rides...

Explain to us, Dr. Sullivan, what was, what was the Freedom Rides in the midst of, historically speaking?

>> They came at a pivotal moment in American history and in the history of the civil rights movement.

The spring of 1961, John F. Kennedy was just inaugurated president.

The catalyst was a series of Supreme Court decisions following similar to Brown, which was 1954.

In 1946 and then in 1960, two court decisions barring segregation in interstate travel, and as with the Brown decision, these decisions were ignored, largely.

So these students, young people, traveled on a bus through the Deep South as citizens protected by a Supreme Court ruling to test the enforcement.

And the fact that this new, young administration had just come in with their attention focused on foreign policy and other concerns, it brought it to the attention not just of the country, but of the world.

>> Bishop James, you lived this history.

Tell us, what did you do as a part of helping to make the way for the Freedom Riders in 1961?

>> I became the first consultant rector of social action for the AME system in the world in 1960, and it gave me the opportunity to be in the center of the action throughout the '60s.

>> And you talked to me earlier about the fact that you actually, when these Freedom Riders came through South Carolina, you helped take care of them, helped feed them.

>> Yes.

When Nooker McCain-- J. T. McCain, we called him "Nooker"-- lived in South Carolina, and we worked on many, many civil rights programs there.

NAACP, he was active in CORE, was a field trainer.

He just was an extraordinary person.

>> P.A.

: And he was one of the trainers during that time for these students to show them how to not be violent.

>> The Freedom Ride was a result of a CORE initiative, that is the Congress of Racial Equality.

C-O-E, that's the acronym.

C-O-R-E. And I think that that's the reason they also came through Sumter.

I think when they came from Charlotte to Rock Hill, and then from Rock Hill to Winnsboro, the two buses-- you had Trailway buses and Greyhound buses-- was starting out through Charlotte, but it was the Trailway bus that got to Sumter after the action that took place in Winnsboro, and our church was the place where the Freedom Riders on the first Freedom Ride got a full-course meal with turkey and vegetables and pies and all the rest of it the night before they left for Atlanta and then on into Alabama, where the unfortunate activities took place.

>> Dr. Forde, let's look at how the media played a role in what happened and why it happened in 1961.

Did television play a role in this at all?

>> It did.

The first journalists on the scene, however, were members of the Black press, and this was Moses Newsome from the Baltimore African-American, Afro-American, and Simeon Booker of Jet and Ebony magazine.

They rode on the bus with the Freedom Riders from Washington down through Virginia and into South Carolina.

The national press did not appear on the scene until the events in Birmingham, the national White press, I should say.

And it just so happened that Howard K. Smith of CBS was there.

He had just been filming a documentary of Birmingham called "Who Speaks for Birmingham?"

about the state of race relations and the near police state that reigned at the time in Birmingham.

And that's when we first get television coverage of the Freedom Rides.

And from that point on, with the fiery events that take place in Birmingham, television is on the scene as well.

>>I do wonder, and I wanna get back to this, but I wanna ask you, Dr. Sullivan, we ask the question, why don't we know more about this?

This is the 50th anniversary of that event.

Why haven't we heard more about the Freedom Rides and the Freedom Riders, historically speaking, up to this point?

>> I think it's the way we don't teach history.

It's such an important part of a larger movement that's functioning on many levels during this period, and you know, if you think about the South and what it was like before the Brown decision and the prices of desegregation, there's so much at play.

And the Freedom Ride is a part of a larger movement, and when you think of the attorneys-- I mean, the University of South Carolina was desegregated in 1963.

One thing interesting about the Freedom Riders is they organized their ride, the CORE riders, they were planning to end up in New Orleans on May 17th, the anniversary of Brown ruling.

So all of this a push to implement the law that was, you know, we had the Briggs v. Elliott case here in South Carolina.

It's so intertwined with the history of our country developing to become a fuller, more inclusive democracy, and the Freedom Riders-- Again, that moment in '61, the sit-ins were 1960, the founding of SNCC.

It's such a rich period.

And you're right, there's so much to know, and the Freedom Riders are a window onto this in such a powerful, dramatic, concentrated moment, because the violent resistance just shows how this was just playing out and put it, as Dr. Forde pointed out, in front of the nation thanks to the presence of the media and television.

>> P.A.

: But I wonder, Bishop James, again historically speaking, do you think that we haven't heard as much about this because this was an ugly period that we didn't want to remember?

>> Yes, I think as the professor has said, we usually advertise the worst of the news, and the idealistic news really takes a backseat to the worst things that's happened in the area.

Almost everywhere including the 11 o'clock news tonight, you'll find that to be the case.

And I think that while the ideals that were sought by the civil rights participants and the Freedom Riders were so very important to them, society kind of left it to people who were offended and were slighted to tell their story.

And we didn't own too many news chains.

>> P.A.

: Exactly.

Let's talk, Dr. Forde, again about the pictures that were on TV.

Did TV push this effort forward, ironically?

>> It was.

John Lewis, who was of course one of the original Freedom Riders and a congressman today and has been an important civil rights activist throughout the second part of the 20th century and into 21st century in this country, he has said of the civil rights movement that the news media was-- I don't think it was he said "the wind beneath its wings," but something to the effect, that the civil rights movement was the choir, and without the media, its song wouldn't have been heard.

There's some truth to that.

When television really, in some ways, comes fully to aid for the civil rights movement right close to that moment.

It had been maturing up to that moment.

With the civil rights movement, the media was able to broadcast all over the nation, in fact all over the world, what was happening in America.

This was not welcome news, certainly to the Kennedys, who were so focused on Cold War and foreign policy issues, to have it demonstrated to the world that Americans were not living up to the ideals that their constitution and their democratic ideals, right here in their own country.

>> You quoted W. E. B.

Du Bois about publicity and the civil rights struggle.

Do you have that quote with you, by chance?

Because I thought that was a very eye-opening.

>> I do.

It's wonderful, and it was spoken right here in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1946 at the Township Auditorium.

Modjeska Simpkins was one of the organizers of the meeting, and it was a meeting of youth.

Dr. Du Bois understood that youth would play a pivotal role in pushing Jim Crow down.

I mean, the attorneys were so important, and all these-- But he thought young people, he really had faith in young people, and that the media, you had to shine a light.

This is what he said over here at the auditorium.

"Truth and reason can and will prevail, but only with publicity, blatant, pitiless publicity.

You have got to make the people of the United States and the world know what is going on in the South.

You have got to use every field of publicity to force the truth into their ears and before their eyes.

You have got to make it impossible for any human being to live in the South and not realize the barbarities that prevail here."

>> P.A.

: Wow.

What do you think was the effect, Bishop James, of the Freedom Rides?

Did the Freedom Rides actually open the country's eyes and propel the country into doing the right thing?

>> Yes.

The target was the response of the transportation companies, the bus companies.

And it did make a difference.

I just thought of the statement that was made by Eleanor Roosevelt, which is a statement that's on one of the pieces of literature that I was asking for just now as it relates to the Freedom Ride and what it meant.

It did mean a difference.

>> Mr. Raymond Arsenault's book, he outlines quite a few incidences, especially one where he talks about, there was a Black Bible and a White Bible for being in court, and Black people had to use one Bible, and White people had to use one Bible, and the White bailiff could not hold the Bible for the Black person, and so the Black person would have to hold his own Bible and-- >> It's extreme.

For young people to understand how, to what lengths it existed.

And I think one thing about the Freedom Rides, even though it did bring attention and focus attention, that was 1961, and as a result of it, the ICC enforced the Supreme Court's ruling.

It would be three more years until we had a Civil Rights Act, much more violence, many deaths, and tremendous courage and persistence.

I think one thing this wonderful film, Stanley Nelson's film, really reminds us what was happening in the South, but it also reminds us what this country tolerated, if not supported.

And the Freedom Riders made it clear that everyone knew what was happening, and what was happening, even though the Supreme Court had ruled that as a citizen, you could ride freely through the South.

So that raises some important questions back to your earlier one.

Why don't we know?

This is really so woven into our history, into American history, and it's part of a national history.

It plays out in the South.

That's the battleground.

But where's the rest of the country?

That's the question.

>> P.A.

: And I do have to ask, Dr. Forde, what do you take away from this documentary, "Freedom Riders"?

>> Well, as someone who thinks a lot about the role of media in American history, I take away...the need for national media, all media, all news outlets, to be participating in American public life and covering the most important and difficult stories.

And looking for them, actively looking for them.

>> P.A.

: And Bishop James, having lived this history, what impact do you think that the Freedom Rides, what impact did they have on us today?

>> It moved the cause along significantly.

The participation of White and Black Freedom Riders set an example and underscored the fact that the principles that were being sought and advocated for action and obedience were American principles.

They were not principles for Black folks or for White folks.

It was American.

And I think that that it's very significant in the struggle that continues to go on to some extent that we are a diverse country, and that the defenders of this country have always been multi-colored, from the beginning, Crispus Attucks on Boston Commons to the last youngster that showed up in Afghanistan.

>> P.A.

: Absolutely.

Bishop, thank you very much.

Ladies, doctors, thank you very much.

I appreciate you being with us today.

And we really wanna hear from you.

Our mailing address is... Well, that's our show.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And remember, stay connected.

I'm P.A.

Bennett, and I'll see you next time, right here on "Connections."

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