The life experiences of Luther E. Smith Jr., Roger Gray IV and Jarol Sanchez couldn't be more different. But they ride together on a bus bound for Jackson, Miss., learning the stories of the Deep South’s violent journey from racial separation to reconciliation.
The annual bus trips are the brainchild of Bernard LaFayette Jr., a longtime civil rights activist and distinguished senior scholar in residence at Emory University's Candler School of Theology. LaFayette, now 70, was a student in Nashville when he joined the Freedom Rides, a mass movement started by the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 that involved more than 400 black and white Americans, mostly students. The riders efforts' that year ultimately led to the successful desegregation of interstate bus travel in the South.
Riders, including Rep. John Lewis, were beaten in Rock Hill, S.C., Anniston, Ala., Montgomery and Birmingham. One of the first buses was set afire on May 14, 1961 in Anniston, with riders narrowly escaping.
This year, LaFayette's bus tour coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides. A reunion this week in Jackson includes more 100 Freedom Riders, students and state and local officials. On Sunday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour issued an apology to the Freedom Riders for how the state treated them in 1961. From May to December of that year, more than 300 riders were arrested for "breach of the peace" in Jackson and jailed at Parchman state prison. On Wednesday, the Freedom Riders returned to Parchman for a private tour.
LaFayette's bus riders -- white, black and Latino -- spanned five generations, ages 6 to 70.
Stops included Montgomery, where a museum honoring the Freedom Riders opened this week in the city's former Greyhound bus station. There, LaFayette told riders Rosa Parks didn't refuse to leave her seat on the city's segregated buses in 1955 because she was tired, a widely held belief. Parks said in her autobiography she was thinking of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy who had been lynched earlier that year in Money, Miss.
In Selma, where LaFayette led the Voter Education Project in 1963, he described an attempt on his life. Two white men parked outside his home lured him to their car with a plea for help. When he leaned into the car, one of the men hit him in the head with a club. When LaFayette didn't pass out, the men panicked and left as one of his neighbors came to his aid.
That same night, Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers was killed in the carport of his Jackson home.
When the bus rolled down Evers' nondescript street in Jackson, riders learned why he was targeted. Evers was organizing rural workers to mobilize and defend their rights, LaFayette said.
"[The bus tours] give people an idea of the history and evolution of the movement and the importance of the nonviolence strategy," LaFayette said. Ultimately, he aims to inspire people to address problems in their own communities, using tactics that worked for civil rights protesters in the 1960s.
Roger Gray IV, a senior at Tuskegee University, was inspired to do just that.
"I’ve been familiar with the methods of nonviolence, but honestly, if it was me in that situation, I couldn’t have been that passive," he said. "In order for these people to be in that mindset where they realize that being violent is not going to be the best answer for this certain situation, that’s what is most intriguing to me."
Smith, 64, spends his days teaching about church and community at Candler. He's convinced the protest methods used in the 1960s are still relevant in fighting today's problems.
"It's really important for us to remember this heritage if we are truly to understand our present and to anticipate our future," Smith said.
Jarol Sanchez has spent most of his life surrounded by violence in Medellin, Colombia. The 42-year-old Atlantan spent 11 years in the notorious Bellavista Prison on kidnapping and conspiracy charges. While in jail, he urged other prisoners to stop killing one another.
Now, he teaches people about nonviolent conflict resolution. The tactics, he said, as well as the history, are necessary. "We need lots more buses."
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