Birmingham, Montgomery will commemorate 60th anniversary of historic Freedom Rides with immersive exhibit
Updated 7:37 PM;
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A restored vintage Greyhound bus that is part of the Freedom Rides Museum collection in Montgomery will visit the Central Branch of the Birmingham Public Library on Wednesday, May 19, as part of the 60th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides commemoration.
The stop at the Birmingham library is part of a tour called “Retracing the Journey. Passing the Torch.” The tour is recreating the route of the historic Freedom Ride that started in Tennessee and made its way to Birmingham and Montgomery in May 1961.
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By Alabama NewsCenter Staff
March 9, 2021
The 2021 virtual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage highlighted the Freedom Rides and Bloody Sunday while honoring the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis. (file and contributed)
On March 4, 1961, two buses left Washington headed south. A group of activists known as the Freedom Riders were on board, challenging Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in interstate travel.
The annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage that took place last Friday, 60 years after that act of nonviolent civil disobedience, commemorated the anniversary and paid tribute to the pilgrimage’s board chairman emeritus, the late Congressman John Lewis.
From May into September 1961, more than 60 Freedom Rides took place, during which more than 400 young Blacks and whites traveled shoulder to shoulder, challenging the Jim Crow transportation laws that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling had struck down but cities across the South were ignoring.
By Michael Sznadjerman
Alabama Newscenter
In her police mugshot taken almost 60 years ago in Jackson, Mississippi, Catherine Burks-Brooks looks straight into the camera, without fear or agitation. One might even interpret the curve of her mouth as a smirk.
What was Brooks – then a 21-year-old college student and Freedom Rider, already battle-hardened from several civil rights actions – really thinking about when the bulb flashed?
“When they took that picture, I knew I was going to jail,” said Brooks, who lives in Center Point, near Birmingham. “I was tired. I was hungry. And I was ready to get into bed. I was not afraid.”