Exhibit at Lehman Library recalls Freedom Riders’ sacrifice

In the spring of 1961, 13 volunteers boarded one Greyhound and one Trailways bus in Washington, D.C.

By the time they arrived in Birmingham, Ala. weeks later, the Greyhound bus had been burned by a caravan of Klu Klux Klansmen. There, the Trailway bus was attacked by another mob at the station.

Riders, bystanders and reporters were severely beaten as police stood by. The volunteers wanted to keep on going, but no driver would take them to New Orleans. Attorney General Robert Kennedy had to send his special assistant to fly the group safely out of Alabama.

The first freedom riders included seven blacks, six whites, eight southerners and five northerners, ranging in age from 18 to 61. They set out to test two Supreme Court decisions that had made racial segregation in interstate travel illegal, but which were being largely ignored in the South. Before they left they received non-violence training and signed this waver:

“I wish to apply for acceptance as a participant in CORE’s Freedom Ride, 1961, 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 shall be participating in nonviolent protest against racial discrimination, that arrest or personal injury to me might result.”

That initial trip is just a few panels of the story told by a new photo exhibition on display at Lehman College’s Leonard Lief Library in commemoration of the freedom rides. Created by Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and PBS’s history series American Experience and funded through a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the exhibition — like that first ride — is just making its first stop on a national tour that includes 20 sites.

It is being shown in conjunction with the May 2011 release of Freedom Riders, a PBS documentary directed by Stanley Nelson. American Experience is also organizing forums and a 2011 Student Freedom Ride to take 40 college students on a seven state tour of significant locations.

The story they, and those who attend the exhibit, will learn is one of struggle, but not defeat.

There were more rides, still.