Original Freedom Rider Speaking At MLK Day Commemoration
By RICHARD ROOKER
MLK Day Commemoration Committee
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Monday, Jan. 18, Charles Person, one of three surviving original Freedom Riders of 1961, will be the speaker for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center. The event runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. with doors opening at 11 a.m. Lunch will be provided to the first 500 through the doors.
This is the second in a three-part series explaining the Freedom Rides.)
Part 2 — Charles Person and the Freedom Rides
On May 4, 1961, a Greyhound and a Trailways bus pulled out of Washington, D.C., bound for New Orleans. Thirteen Freedom Riders – seven black, six white – sought to test the integration of waiting room, restroom and restaurant facilities at bus stations following a Supreme Court decision pronouncing segregation in terminals illegal. The Riders hoped to reach their destination safely by May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional.
On board the Trailways bus, Charles Person, at 18 the youngest Freedom Rider, felt excitement and anxiety. A Washington Post headline read, “Pilgrimage Off On Racial Test.” Excitement. But at dinner the night before their departure a fellow rider had nervously joked, “Eat well and enjoy because this might be our Last Supper.” Anxiety.
Person tested the facilities at the first stop in Fredericksburg. Without incident, he used the white restroom and ordered a drink at the lunch counter. So far, so good.
The stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, brought a different response. Here Person tested a shoeshine stand. He remained seated at the stand when the employee refused him service. After a police officer warned Person to desist, Person left. A fellow Rider replaced him on the stand and was arrested. The Rides would not be trouble free.
The first violence broke out in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Ku Klux Klan member Elwin Wilson physically beat Rider John Lewis, today a 14-term Congressman from Georgia.
In Atlanta, the Riders dined with Martin Luther King, Jr. Although King called the Rides “nonoviolent direct action at its very best,” he declined to join the Riders telling them, “You will never make it out of Alabama.”
The next day, May 14, Mother’s Day, proved King right. The two buses departed Atlanta an hour apart. A mob met the Greyhound bus in the Anniston, Alabama station. Members of the mob stabbed the tires and tried to board the bus. The bus fled the station stopping five miles outside the town when all tires went flat. A parade of cars filled with Klan members had followed the bus. The mob closed in to attack the bus again.
Mob members set the bus afire and held the doors closed to burn the Riders alive. All escaped, but were beaten outside the bus. The fire destroyed the Greyhound bus.
Person’s Trailways bus left Atlanta with Klansmen aboard. Klansmen beat Person and another Rider nearly unconscious en route to Birmingham for sitting in the front seat. In Birmingham another mob awaited the arrival of the Riders. Charles Person and James Peck led the Riders off the bus into the station.
Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor, a strict segregationist, assured the mob he would give them 15 minutes before bringing police to the station to break up any violence. Person and other Riders suffered multiple injuries but escaped.
By Mother’s Day end, the Freedom Rides looked finished. Mobs destroyed one bus and effectively halted the other. For the moment violence emerged victorious.
Tomorrow – Part 3: Charles Person before and after the Rides.