Hey everyb0dy,
The National Tour to Drive Out Trump/Pence spent most of our tenth day traveling from Atlanta, through Alabama and Mississippi, and arrived in New Orleans in the evening. While on the road, we made an important stop in the historic city of Montgomery, Alabama, the state capitol and former home of KKK lover Jeff Sessions, to visit the Freedom Rides Museum. Our experience there was eye-opening for all of us, and reminded us of the amazing bravery and major strides made by Civil Rights activists and Black resistance throughout all of American history.
The Freedom Riders of 1961 included both Black and white young people, many of whom were students, who were resolved to end the segregation of interstate buses stopping in cities all throughout the South.
Beginning in Washington, D.C., groups of Freedom Riders sat alongside one another on buses and in bus stop waiting rooms, which were divided into “colored” and “white” spaces, with severe contrasts in quality and availability. When they arrived in Alabama, they were met with astoundingly horrific acts of violence by mobs of white racists, including members of the Ku Klux Klan. The Freedom Riders had received nonviolence training. As they were brutally attacked coming off the buses in Montgomery, Anniston, and Birmingham, they received absolutely no protection from the police, who encouraged Klan members to ferociously beat the riders without any interference from law enforcement for 15 to 30 minutes.
Our passionate and informative tour guide in the museum shared this history with us, and she described and showed images of what this museum—converted from the Greyhound station where the events in Montgomery took place—looked like in the 1950s and ‘60s. We were able to see the dividing line that separated “colored” from “white” space, and our guide informed us that the “colored” waiting room and restrooms were almost never open; Black people traveling for hours on end would have no access to food, water, or restrooms, while white people enjoyed these luxuries without concern. The museum included the entrance to the “colored” waiting room, as well as murals, photographs of the Freedom Riders, poems, and sculptures, paintings, drawings, collages, and a quilt inspired by the bravery and lasting legacy of these activists. The riders succeeded in gaining new Interstate Commerce Commission regulations requiring the dismantling of segregated space on interstate buses and in stations.
For many of the Volunteers, their perseverance and solidarity was beyond admirable, and the pain of imagining the moments described vividly by our guide—such as angry white mobs setting one bus aflame with Freedom Riders, and even people not involved with the resistance, inside and holding the doors closed to trap them—affected us very deeply. We thank the museum, the Freedom Riders, and every person who has fought for equality for Black people in America. We are so inspired by their unwavering spirits, and we are determined to continue this fight against a fascist, racist, oppressive America. Mass incarceration, police murders of Black Americans, and blatant racism and hate crimes growing throughout the entire country must be rejected entirely. The Trump/Pence fascist regime wants a white-ruled, fascist America, and we will never allow them to succeed in enacting this vision. We will keep fighting to drive them out of office before more innocent Black men and women are locked up, beaten, or killed.