So now let's move on to Freedom Rides, and what were they and what motivated the Nashville group to get involved. >> There were a couple of things that caused the Nashville group to get involved with the Freedom Rides of 1961. They started in Washington D.C. and John Lewis applied it was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, which we call CORE. And John Lewis was accepted. I was actually an applicant, but I was not 21 years old. So therefore I had to get parental permission, get my parents to sign for me. And when I sent the papers off for my parents to sign, I didn't get a response. I'm in Nashville. They're in Tampa, Florida. So I called and asked my father did he get the papers .and he said yes, he did. I said, well, I need you to sign and send them back to me right away. I was the first person in my family to go to college, so I was assuming that he might think it was related to college or something. >> Right, right, right. >> And he said, do you think I didn't read them? The papers? And I was saying to myself, I was hoping you wouldn't. Just go ahead and sign the papers and send it back, cuz I got a deadline here. And he said, no, I did read them, and I'm not gonna sign your death warrant. He said that before the freedom ride started in Washington DC. So I decided that I would just have to miss this trip. In fact, we took John Lewis to the bus station to catch the bus, and the bus had gone, five of Nashville. So we had to drive him to the next, chase the bus down to get him on the Freedom Ride bus. So, one of the reasons why these Nashville students decide to take up the Freedom Rides once they were left Washington, DC and were grounded in Anniston, Alabama, the bus being burned and that sort of thing, and then in the Trailways bus was going to Birmingham. Same freedom rides, but they had two different buses. They gotten beaten up in Birmingham and they got stopped. The Attorney General had asked for a cooling off period to give the Federal Government a chance to work out something with the local state governors and people. To get protection to citizens traveling on the bus interstate, and CORE had exhausted their people who had signed up to go on original ride because they had been beaten and they were hospitalized. And it was not very, logical to try to recruit more people to go get massacred. So John Lewis returned to Nashville. Diane had just gotten out of jail, I believe, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, wherever. And those of us in Nashville said no we can't allow violence to stop a non violent movement, because we've been trained by Jim Lawson. We've faced violence before, and jail, and beatings and that sort of thing. And that was not one of the deterrents when it comes to non-violence. So we said we have to go. So we took over the Freedom Rides. And John Lewis had all of the materials. He had the books. He had the stops. He had the contacts along the different cities. Because the purpose of the Freedom Ride was not only to just ride the bus, it was a stop in these various cities along the way in the South, and to have rallies and to get people in motion. Because as I said earlier, the Freedom Rides, the court decisions had already been made to desegregate interstate travels. >> Right, yes. >> But the people weren't participating in it, because of the local officials. And so therefore, we wanted to stop in every city we go through, major city, and stimulate people to start using a facility. The other reason we decided to go out of Nashville is because during the sit ins in 1960, those lunch counters that we desegregated included the bus station in Nashville. So therefore, we had already desegregated our bus station. So as it were, you could ride a bus, segregated bus, a Greyhound, out of Virginia, and all the way through Nashville, get off a segregated bus, and go into an integrated bus station. Cuz the lunch counters waiting room, restrooms, everything was desegregated in 1960. We had two groups, first group, and then we had a second group, the backup group. And I was in charge of the backup group, cuz they knew that no matter what happened to the first group I was gonna make sure that the second group got launched. And sure enough the first group got arrested in Birmingham. And the charge was protective custody. They put them in jail to protect them from the mob. It's like putting a banker in jail so he wouldn't get robbed, okay? [LAUGH] And so, they put him back on. They drove him from Birmingham, all the way up to the Tennessee lines, the Tennessee state lines out of Alabama. By the time they got arrested, we launched the second group. We went by train and went by car to rendezvous in Birmingham. So the other group got released, and they got put out on the highway. So we had to have people go and pick them up, and take them back to Birmingham. So, anyway, on the freedom rides, we as students out of Nashville had a strategy. So we wouldn't Being left without troops to continue the freedom rides. Those of use who left to go on the freedom rides dropped out of school in the midst of our exams. So that those other students who had been involved with us in the sit-ins they would follow us. So we took the lead in order to do that. And sure enough, once we got to Birmingham, no bus would take us to Montgomery, and we had interstate tickets. And every time we approached the bus, when the bus would come up headed to Birmingham, the driver would get off and refuse to ride the bus. And we kept going every time a bus would come up. That was my first encounter with the Ku Klux Klan in robes in that bus station in Birmingham. They came out in robes. They had the hoods pulled back so their faces were not covered, but they had their robes on. And they would stomp us on our feet, because we would be asleep in the wee hours of the morning. We hadn't had any sleep so we would wake up every time the bus would come during the night and the client would not only stomp our feet, they would throw cold water on us. I remember, one of them, when they threw the cold water on me, I woke up and I said, thank you. >> [LAUGH] >> Cuz we needed to stay awake so that we'd watch them. [LAUGH] So, they were doing it to humiliate us. I appreciate it because I needed to watch them. >> Were you turning around on them right? >> So they didn't understand so I thank you because they didn't know about nonviolence. We finally got a bus. The Attorney General got a bus for us to go all the way to New Orleans. Well, when we realized they were gonna take us all the way to New Orleans and not stop to those different cities, we went back and got one-way tickets to the next city. So our tickets one-way from Birmingham to Montgomery. And, got the tickets for us. We kept our original tickets for the interstate travel. This was in between states. So, that meant that attorney general could not, take us on that bus all the way to New Orleans, we only had one way tickets. So that put a little wrench in there. We got on the bus, and they were waiting for us at Montgomery. That's when we had the incident there. But, the freedom rides were scheduled and they were planned for these different cities. But once we got to Montgomery and we got beaten up by the mob, we got back on those buses. And we had police protection and the National Guard all the way to the line in Mississippi. And the Mississippi National Guard took it up from there. Because Ross Barnett said that he would not tolerate any kind of violence at the bus stations and stuff like that. So his only plan was to arrest us. So when we got there, we got arrested. So we decided to make that our beachhead. See, a lot of the nonviolence strategy we use come directly out of the military training. So we established what we call a beachhead in Jackson, Mississippi. And that was that place where the battle, the final battle was gonna be won. >> Ross Barnett. >> Yes, absolutely, and that's why we had appeal to the whole nation. There were 11 different countries represented on the freedom rides. We had to give people time to come, so what we did was we stayed in jail 39 days during the appeal period. That was strategy on our part to keep it in the news. >> Right, right. >> Cuz had he gone to New Orleans it'd have been over. >> Right, then you wouldn't have had that impact along the way. >> That's it. So there was the Nashville movement, there were the freedom rides, then there was the Selma movement, okay, and then there was the poor people's campaign. There was also a movement that we had in New York, which is the Spring Mobilization to end the War in Vietnam. Martin Luther King had already come out with a statement and he spoke at the UN, this time. I was a national coordinator for that for a million people in the streets one day. Outta Central Park, that's where we started with the march. We went all the way to the UN, and the rally was over at the UN, and Martin Luther King had already spoken. And people were still coming out of, okay, that's how long that march was. >> That's amazing. >> Then there was the poor people's campaign, then there was a Charleston hospital workers. >> And all these are happening around the country, in the southeast especially, within a three to five year time period. >> Yes, and see that's the thing that I'm glad you mentioned that. The momentum of the movement and all these movements were connected and Martin Luther King was the leader. Martin Luther King was the only person Living at that particular time who could call for a global, okay, boycott. >> Right. >> Because he was so well expected. Even today his birthday is celebrated in over 100 countries, national holiday.
