RICHMOND, Va. – Two former Freedom Riders are helping to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the trip through the Deep South that challenged racial segregation in public transportation systems.
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland and the Rev. Reginald Green appeared at the University of Mary Washington to honor the Freedom Rides and their organizer, the late James Farmer. Farmer was head of the Congress of Racial Equality during the civil rights era and later became a professor at the Fredericksburg school.
Mulholland and Green participated in an event to kick off the school’s three-month series of tributes to the demonstrations.
Farmer, six other Black people and six White people participated in the first Freedom Ride, traveling from Washington, D.C., in May 1961 to test whether southern states were implementing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred segregation in public-transportation facilities. They faced violent attacks from White mobs who opposed desegregation, and the first Greyhound bus was firebombed and the riders beaten in Anniston, Ala.
After news of the violence spread, hundreds of others including Mulholland and Green joined the Freedom Rides, and the two were among hundreds jailed that summer in Jackson, Miss. The demonstrations became a defining point in U.S. civil rights history.
Green was a student at Virginia Union University when he answered a call to students on Southern campuses to become Freedom Riders. He made it as far as Jackson, where he was arrested on June 7, 1961. He and other Freedom Riders were transferred to the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, a place known for its brutality.
He met Farmer at Parchman, and recalls his booming singing voice.
