Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
For The Birmingham Times
Dozens of patrons visited the parking lot of the Birmingham Public Library’s Central Branch last week to tour a traveling artifact and to hear from two people who had a front-seat view of history.
The Freedom Riders Museum rolled a 1957 vintage Greyhound bus into the parking lot to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1961 Freedom Rides.
The event featured Center Point’s Catherine Burks Brooks and the Rev. Clyde Carter of Hoover, a pair of Freedom Riders who risked their lives to be part of the fight for racial equality.
Brooks said the bus brought back memories.
How Far Has America Really Come From Jim Crow-Era Racist Mob Violence?
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Alabama Freedom Riders recall their fight for equal treatment
By Michael Sznajderman May 20, 2021
The Rev. Clyde L. Carter and his wife, Eva, stand next to a refurbished 1960s-era Greyhound bus at the Birmingham Public Library. Sixty years ago, Carter rode similar buses as part of the Freedom Rides in defiance of segregation. (Michael Sznajderman / Alabama NewsCenter)
Two Birmingham natives who participated 60 years ago in the historic Freedom Rides told their stories to an inquisitive and admiring crowd Wednesday evening at the Birmingham Public Library.
Catherine Burks-Brooks and the Rev. Clyde L. Carter weren’t on the first two buses that left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, that were attacked by pro-segregation mobs in Anniston and Birmingham. Rather, they were part of the subsequent wave of young blacks and whites who continued the rides on interstate buses later that month and through the summer of 1961 with the goal of permanently crushing segregated public tra