Audio
Episode 1: Roy Wood, Jr. interviews Charles Person (Freedom Rider)
Transcript
Welcome to We Will Rise: National Parks and Civil Rights.
Close your eyes and imagine a National Park. Are you picturing waterfalls and mountains? Or do you think of Dr. King's childhood home, Japanese internment camps, and a school that became a battleground for racial integration?
National parks aren't just wilderness. They are spaces of remembrance, founded to preserve the stories of who we are and how we came to be. National Parks inspire us to do better, be better. To climb mountains both physical and figurative. Join Park Rangers, researchers, authors and activists as we discuss what liberty and justice for all means on our public land.
[Music volume increases. Song: Turn Me Round, by the Psalters]
Welcome to our first episode. My name is Kat, and I'm a Park Ranger at Freedom Riders National Monument and Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument. Today, we are honored to welcome Charles Person and Roy Wood, Jr.
Charles Person was a Freedom Rider. Freedom Riders rode buses across the South to test Supreme Court rulings declaring segregation unconstitutional in restrooms, bus depots, and waiting areas. Brutal violence in Alabama showed that when it came to integration, the nation was failing. Freedom Riders sat down on these buses in order to stand up for the truest of our nation's ideals. Mr. Person has just published a memoir of his experiences and a call to action for change: Buses are a Comin'.
Roy Wood, Jr. is a comedian best known for his work on The Daily Show. Raised in Birmingham, he has written that Alabama represents to him painful history, new hope and home. I'll let the two of them take it from here.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Well, let me start just on the behalf of all of Black America, brother Person, and just tell you, thank you. Just a simple thank you. And that's before we even get to the medals that are on your chest as a Marine Corps veteran, just thank you for what you all chose to do in that ride down South. I have a million questions. I hope some of these you haven't been asked before, but the book, the memoir, pardon me. It's straight up poetry. And the thing that I really enjoyed about your memoir is that you didn't just go into what happened and often when I, when we look at a lot of the media that's created around the civil rights - but I'm talking TV and film primarily. You only have enough time for the what. This is what happened. This is who did it. This is what changed. These are the policies. Whereas with your memoir, you were able to really get into the why people chose to do what they did. My first question to you, just out the gate. You're 18 when you decide to become a Freedom Rider, how did you convince your Mama to say yes? ‘Hey, Mama, I'm going on a racism tour down South. But don't be worried.’
Charles Person: Well, I didn't quite tell her the whole truth. I just explained to her that I was going to be seen for advanced training in nonviolence. Now she knew that I was active in the Atlanta movement, that I had been in jail, and like most parents, she figured there was not much more that could happen to me. And no one realized that when laid in store for the Freedom Riders, but Dad more or less convinced her that I would be okay. The men in the family supported me, and that's what made it possible. But convincing Mom, you know, everywhere they're going to worry. I had never left the South before. I'd never left the state of Georgia before. So all this was new, and at 18, it was quite an adventure.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Now the Freedom Riders were comprised of young and old, men and women, more importantly, White and Black. How much interaction had you had with White allies up into that point before you got to DC and met the people that you would be on the bus with?
Charles Person: In the Atlanta movement, unfortunately, we had very few Whites participate. [unintelligible] There was one White fellow that was in my freshman English class. But other than that, our Association, we were really lone wolves operating alone in Atlanta. So it was really encouraging when I got there, the meet of the Whites that were involved, it was really surprising. And they really welcomed you on board. In fact, the Bergman's, Dr. Bergman and his wife, so they were more or less like my parents. They said "We're going to take care of you." And believe it or not, they tried.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Let's stay right there for a second with Dr. Bergman. He was one of the people I believe, if correct me from wrong, but in the memoir, you talked about how Dr. Bergman said, and this is going back to the why, people were choosing to take a stand. Dr. Bergman saw the mistreatment of African Americans while he served, and it was one of the things that kind of stuck with him and just that one little annoying thing that just never left his mind. And he decided to act on it. And he saw the Freedom Rides as an opportunity to actively be a part of something that would push the nation forward. What advice do you have, if any, for White people today, who...they have that same inkling in the back of their mind, like Dr. Bergman, but they haven't quite taken that step or want to try and find that program. Well, I guess what advice would you have for them in deciding to make that step forward?
Charles Person: I think the biggest problem most Whites have today is they are a product of our educational system. And the biggest problem with that is that we were...Slavery and the Trail of Tears, the Manifest Destiny, the Mexican Wars, they were all taught as little modules. They were all separate, whereas if you connect them together, then all of a sudden you see a picture of how we became that country from sea to shining sea. And once that happens, then they have a new outlook on what our aspirations are and how bad we were treated. In other words, sometimes you say, "Oh, yeah, well slavery was this and that, and sometimes the movies glamorized those aspects of slavery or how we were content and happy little pickaninnies. And that was not the case. So they need to realize how life was for Blacks, not only in slavery, but during the era of Jim Crow. Once they have a better understanding, then we can have that conversation, and then they can understand that I'm not whining, and I'm not begging, I don't want anything more than is given any other American. I want to belong, just like you want to belong. I mean, we ask for nothing special. We just want to be treated as normal human beings.
Roy Wood, Jr.: A part of the memoir that struck me as very riveting was not only the age differential in everyone that was involved in the Freedom Ride, the original Freedom Riders from DC, I'm talking about, but also where they all were emotionally in their relationship with the civil rights movement, at that particular biomarker in their life, and how you at 18, you recognized that, you clocked that immediately. And in the memoir you described, okay, I've decided to be a Freedom Rider, which meant you had to go to Washington, DC, for a training period so that you can be taught. Let's just say more in depth nonviolent training and how to, how to maintain your stillness around, let's just say high tense situations with a lot of stimuli going on, to say the least. So in that time, you and all these other strangers, you simulate conflicts, and they were created to test your resolve to remain nonviolent. And in the memoir, you talked about meeting that the 20 year old John Lewis, and in the book you described them as this.
“I smiled. John seethed. John was always serious, always straight faced, always solemn. For me, the importance of the work was primary, but I also felt a sense of adventure. There was no adventure in this for John. For John, this was as serious as life gets.”
At what point in the Freedom Ride did it stop becoming an adventure for you as well and turn into an actual, full focus, primary mission objective?
Charles Person: I think once we got started and we started meeting people in various towns and how they opened up to us, for example, every night, we had to be put up. We had to stay someplace. And we stayed with people and many them, they didn't have very much, but they gave us the best that they had. And after seeing this, you gotta realize I was coming from Atlanta and seeing these people and how they were reaching out to us, who were strangers, and they gave us, like I said, the best they had, that for me, made this journey, it took on more significance. I wanted in some way after the Rides, be able to go reach out to these people and thank them because the journey for me would not have been possible. Plus, also, they gave my parents, I guess, sanity because they knew that I was being taken care of, even though they didn't know these people. It was quite an evolution, you know, from the beginning, the training and all that and how things mounted as we went further and further South.
Roy Wood, Jr.: The thing that I found interesting in the training chapter, and I'm sorry to just stay on that part of the memoir for right now, but for me, this is the first time I've ever seen that layer of the civil rights movement peeled back. They talk about non violence, non violence, and we practice nonviolence. Well, if you practice something that means you have to be trained in it, which means that you all sat and you all figured out ways to yell slurs at each other and sometimes from people who weren't necessarily believable when they said it to you because you knew what their heart was. You knew who they really were and what their soul was. For them to try to recreate a situation of racism for you to react to was a little funny. I would imagine, in the moment, at least a little bit off kilter. Tell me about some of the moments on the trips where you all smiled.
Charles Person: Well, I think the most important thing for us was the evenings. During the day, while we're on the bus, even though, say, I may be sitting with a Rider, we didn't converse very much. We wanted to be focused, and we wanted to make the appearance that we were just passengers. You just happen to have sit in the same seat. But in the evenings we always had dinner together and we discussed what went right that day and what went wrong. And that was also a time when we were given our allowance. And that was important because one of the most embarrassing thing that could have ever happened to us, had we gone into a restaurant, ordered food and they served us and we didn't have the money to pay. So it is imperative that we have funds. Also, I was taught there, and it's been with me all my life, is I always tip generously. That's one of the things, because if you get served, be generous in your tipping. And that's been a habit I've had all my life. You know, when I go places, I always tip liberally because it's important. Black people have a reputation throughout the world as being poor tippers, you know, the slightest thing is wrong with the service and we retaliate to the server and maybe it's not even the server's fault.
Roy Wood, Jr.: There's warm water in my ice water. I'm not tipping you. [Laughter]
Charles Person: You've been there?
Roy Wood, Jr.: Oh, Yeah. I used to be a server. I worked at Golden Corral for two years. I have some first hand experience. So in sticking with the memoir, Buses are a Comin', You not only paint a beautiful picture of the circumstances that led to everyone who made this choice. And, of course, you cover everything that happens in Anniston and the horrors in Birmingham. And I do want to talk about Birmingham a little later, but I just found this memoir so compelling because of the why. And you actively during the time that you all were training, you found your [unintelligible. And this is something I can kind of relate to because, well, not in the circumstances. You get what I'm trying to say. When you're in the presence of people that you're intimidated by or curious of, you're trying to find these moments within the conversations to slip in the quick thing that you were curious about. And you talked about how you went around as best you could over the course of that training period in DC to find out what drove these people to be a part of this. You know why you were there. But I want to know why she's there, he's there, she's there. And you spoke with Reverend Cox, and Reverend Cox said this. He said, quote, ‘So many others made sacrifices so I am not a slave. It's my turn to sacrifice on behalf of someone else. We can sacrifice now, Charles, for those we will never know, who will never know of our sacrifice and will never care we did this. We can sacrifice.’ Do you feel the story of the Freedom Riders and what happened there? Do you, do you know the worth? Like, how aware, because in the moment it's not, you can always go: 'This is going to be a monumental thing that we will be talking about for decades.' But did you know at the time how monumental this was going to be, as the bus is pulling out of Washington, DC? Did you all know?
Charles Person: I don't think that we were aware of the impact. We weren't deluding ourselves to think this is going to be some great revolution or things are going to change. All we hoped for is that we could make a difference. If we can highlight to the country that how things really were, how bad they actually were. And I think that has been the [story?] of the Freedom Rides. Even now. There's so many people that have heard the term, and they have a vague idea of what the Freedom Ride was about. But because of the events that happened afterwards and the deaths and things that happen afterwards, overshadows the Freedom Rides, because it was so early. This was really the first big campaign after the Montgomery Bus Boycott. And also after the death of Emmett Till. All those things had a very strong impact on all of us who were involved. But we weren't going to say that we're going to change the world. We didn't have...we weren't savvy enough to think that what we were doing was going to change the world, but it did.
Roy Wood, Jr.: There's often conversations about, where protests are concerned, about outside agitators. So I was in Birmingham during the George Floyd moment that we had as a country, and there were a lot of protests. There were a lot of demonstrations. And then there was also this group, this contingency of outside agitators that were coming in and starting a lot of ruckus and hijacking the narrative. And that's what the media chose to run with, more often than not. You spoke of something very interesting in the memoir about how, you know, you all have come through Anniston and the bus has been fire-bombed, and many of you have been beaten within an inch of your life. And you get to Birmingham, and you simply need a doctor. And there were Black doctors who were declining, and understandably so, because of the pressure that they were under, they still had to live here when you all leave. Y'all coming in town and you all in the eyes of some Black people at that time, the Freedom Riders were seen as outside agitators. In the moment, because you go through all the training and all the preparation, how did that feel when you all are in need of medical assistance, and the only people who can give it to you are Black people. But the Black people who give it to you are risking literally their entire fiscal existence to help you. In some cases, may be risking their own lives. Were you all understanding of that rejection? Did it anger you? What was that feeling to you yourself being seen as outside agitators when you knew what you were doing was to try to help the greater good.
Charles Person: At first, it was very disappointing and you didn't know how to react. But as it was explained to me why the doctors had taken their position, but I think it seemed wherever there was a door was closed, another one opened, because what we later found out, the only medical help I received was a nurse in Reverend Shuttlesworth's congregation, and she did a remarkable job, considering that was all the medical help I received. I mean, it was sufficient. However, what happened later, that particular wound drained to the base of my skull, and I developed a knot, which got the be out the size of my fist. But the treatment that she gave, it was the only thing. But it got me through for many, many months. I'm always indebted to her, and that's I guess one of the disappointments for me is a lot of those wonderful people who assisted us in all kinds of ways, is being able to go out and reach out to them, and just say thank you because they made a big difference, you know, that that human touch, especially at the time that we were, we were battered and we were bewildered. And to have folks, strangers, come to us and say they understood, and they supported us. And I think that's why the Riders grew from 13 to over 436 Riders because of the empathy not only towards us, but to all the
replacement Riders as well.
Roy Wood, Jr.: What was...I believe it was Anniston, if I'm not mistaken, I can't remember if this part of memoir happened in Anniston or in Birmingham, but you talked about how - I'm pretty sure this was Anniston - where everyone had gotten off, they had firebombed the bus, everyone is getting off of the bus and people are being beaten and the ambulance arrives and the ambulance says it will only take the White Freedom Riders to the hospital. Did that create any type of division within your group when you all saw the way that your White colleagues were being treated, or was that just dismissed because you knew they were standing tall with you?
Charles Person: Well, I think it's the community are the people that were there, how devoted the Freedom Riders were to each other, because when they refused to take the Black Riders, the White Freedom Riders said, 'If you're not going to take them, then we're not going either.' So which would have created a greater crisis, that they not gotten anyone to the hospital, but that defiance of the White Freedom Riders, what brought all of us closer together, but also, you know, it kept them as a group together, you know, because after they left the site of the burning bus, that crowd followed them to the hospital and they threatened to burn the hospital down. These guys had already proven that they would burn up stuff. So if they would burn up a bus, surely setting fire to a hospital is no big deal to them.
Roy Wood, Jr.: I say sometimes, and I say it being playful on stage because, you know, with comedy, you kind of have to be a little silly. But I do think that there is, you know, as a 42 year old Black man and being raised more in the history of civil rights versus the actual moment of civil rights, there's a different separation. And when I look at the present day racism and tragedies that are put at the feet of Black people, there is a trauma to that. There is something terrible to watching the news. There is something that is depressing to having to always take that in and never see justice for our slain brothers and sisters. Like even with the trial that was happening in Minneapolis with Officer Chauvin, well, former Officer Chauvin, I couldn't watch it, and I just, I followed it some, but I could not watch people recounting step by step, and moment by moment. It was too much. But I have the luxury of turning off the TV and at least trying to find some sort of escape. You were born and you were raised in the South, went to college in the South as a Morehouse man. You can't escape a region. I can turn off the TV. You can't escape Atlanta. You can't escape just riding through Birmingham. And they have the Freedom Riders Monument, which just opened this year in Anniston. How do you feel when you go back to these places? Are you ever able to just exist in the present in the South?
Charles Person: That's a good one. When we went through Anniston for the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, I didn't get off the bus. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I had very negative feelings about the place. 10 years later, the 50th, I came by. The town had changed tremendously. There was a lot of empathy by ruling officials of the government, the Mayor and all those people that, you know, they were reaching out to us and were trying to make amends. And the Anniston today is a whole lot different from Anniston back in 1961. I find it a very warm community. I could live there. That's how much it has changed. And the same way with Birmingham when we came back to Birmingham,
of the people. See what has made the difference is the Black community realizes the importance of what happened then and they're reaching out and saying, 'Hey, we're sorry.' And this is the new us, and that's...the new us is what we can embrace. And that's why those portions of the South don't have the stigma that they once had. And I think what happens, what makes it better is people like you who are born there, and, you know, you're the younger generation. You're in between that old past and that new future. And I guess that's what gives us all hope is the fact that we realize that things and people do change and we can make a difference as to how we relate to one another. And I think, this for me, has been the biggest change because I don't feel any anger towards any of those places. In fact, I dispensed with anger a long time ago. I have no reason to hate. I've given up all those, mainly because we won, you know. If we were still on the effects of Jim Crow, I may have a different attitude. But because there are changes, I can be benevolent and say, 'Hey, I can embrace the change.' And I do.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Let's talk about the medals on your chest there. You're 18 and you survive something ridiculously traumatic in the Freedom Ride. Three months later, you're at Paris Island training to be a United States Marine. For what that country had shown you it could be three months prior, why make the choice to go and defend it in Vietnam?
Charles Person: Well, in two fold reasons. One is that my mother knew that I would stay in the Movement. She knew that there's no way I was going to not be involved some way. So she encouraged me. She says, 'Why don't you join the Army?' And because I hadn't been totally truthful with her from the beginning, and after what had happened, I figured I owed it to her. So I did some, I pursued a different route. At the time, the Army was trying to recruit Blacks for the Academy at West Point. Because in those days, the only way you could get in to West Point was have a congressional appointment. Well, you know, they weren't appointing too many Blacks to West Point out in the South. [Laughter] So I wasn't gonna get that. But the thing is, I had all the tests and all that stuff and, of course, academics, that was never a problem. And the physical, it was no problem. But that particular afternoon, the day before I was supposed to do my final to enlist, there was an article on the Marine Corps. And I said, 'Hey, Let's try this.' I went out to the Marine Corps recruiter and he was happy. I did extremely well on the test. But then he found he couldn't enlist me. Because what had happened, when we were arrested in Atlanta, they put our case on what they call the dead docket, which meant I couldn't leave the city at all.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Blacklisted.
Charles Person: So what happened is the recruiter went down there, and I guess he told them, 'So we can get this one out of your hair.' So they allow the recruiter to enlist me. And that's how I enlisted in the Marine Corps. But, you know, I come from a community, we had a lot of veterans in my neighborhood, in Buttermilk Bottom. We had World War I veteran who was disabled. We had Korean War. And, of course, my dad and his cousin were World War II veterans. So in our community, the military didn't have a stigma. In other words, they would say to us, 'Stay in school, get a good education, or join the Army, they'll make a man out of you.' So that's the kind of environment I grew up in, of course my dad was a very proud soldier, in spite of all the crap he had to put up with when he was in the army. I mean, he endured some stuff that... nothing like I experienced then in the Marine Corp. But, you know, I had heard the stories so I was prepared for all the stuff that could possibly have happened.
Roy Wood, Jr.: What's the biggest difference between the two war zones, Vietnam and the civil rights movement?
Charles Person: Well, in Vietnam, I had a gun. [Laughter]
Roy Wood, Jr.: Touché.
Charles Person: You know, I was a peaceful warrior. My role, I think I was destined to do there because I was one of those people who, I was not afraid. I was not afraid during the Freedom Rides. And when I got the Marine Corps and we got in Vietnam, I was cool as a cucumber because I had experienced stuff like, you say, as a nonviolent person, I endured that. And here I was in a situation where I had colleagues, they all had guns and all that other stuff. But I also, you know, I'm serving my country, and when we get to Vietnam, it showed how ill-prepared America was for that war. For example, we're landing in a country where the native language is either Vietnamese or French. In our command, we had no one could speak either language. So what do they do? They rounded up a bunch of us kids who spoke French, enough high school and college French, and we became the interpreters for the US Marine Corps in Vietnam.
Roy Wood, Jr.: If you all just aren't there on that day, we just not communicating with nobody.
Charles Person: Yeah. You know, it's like, 'duh.' They didn't know the good guys from the bad guys. But like I say, you know, the Freedom Rides prepared me for a lot of things in life, but also they prepared me for Vietnam. And I think I survived Vietnam because of what I learned on the Freedom Rides.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Two more questions, and I'll get you out of here. I know we don't have a lot of time. I feel like there is a disconnect between your generation and the generation that's coming behind me. A little bit of my generation, too, in terms of the tactics that should be employed for getting rights, the tactics that should be employed in terms of social justice and equality. I've always been of the belief that civil rights in Jim Crow....I believe that there was much more of a concrete...racism was more concrete and obvious. 'Hey, stop hitting me in the head. Let me go in that school and get an education, please.' Whereas I feel like racism now, it's a lot of policy, there's a lot of...it's not as solid. It's not as clear, it hides. It's a vapor now. And you have to have different tactics for that. And what do you think the young generation and your generation could learn from one another so that there is more of a cohesiveness
to the ideologies of how to fight oppression?
Charles Person: One of the things that I think the young people need to do, if you're going to be a leader, you have to realize that there are dangers inherent in being a leader. And I think a lot of the Black Lives Matter leaders are intimidated by the people who threaten them. So in many cases, you don't know who is in charge of a Black Lives Matter group in your particular city, and I encourage them: Define who you are. Let people know who you are, let them know what the cause is and why you are fighting. The reason: this way you develop allies. A lot of times people will say, 'Well, I don't know why they're marching. Why are they doing this?' You need to explain. Let people know, and so they can realize that, 'Hey, this is for their benefits, for all of our benefit,' And we need to develop allies. You can't operate in a vacuum. And we all live in a community and everyone can contribute. But if you don't let people know, they're not going to participate. I love the enthusiasm of the young people. I enjoy the numbers that they're able to turn out. And they also have to realize that you are in control and you are responsible for what happens. We always had monitors. Also, we had a dress code. And that's important because if you saw somebody throwing a molotov cocktail with a shirt and tie on, do you know, 'Well, hey that's one of our people?' But in most cases, these people have no dress code and you can't isolate them. But I think that they've gotten a bad rep this past summer. Most of violence was not of they're doing and not of the people that sponsored them, but the narrative changed and a lot of people now think that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group because they haven't gone out and corrected the record. And I think that's one of the things they need to even now, they need to go out and say, 'Hey, this is who we are, and this is how we operate.'
Roy Wood, Jr.: You spoke about in a previous interview that I saw, you spoke about the relationship with the media that you all were able to forge during your era, which helped with the narrative of what you all were out to accomplish, when you're at these to protest. How much does media play a role in this misrepresentation of Black Lives Matter's intentions? Separate and apart from what you're saying in regards to them needing to have a more cohesive, a more organized cohesive structure, because sometimes I feel like, well, if the story has been covered differently, then maybe that would have helped as well. I'll get you out of here on this question. So, I try to take my Mama to see Selma, Oscar-winning film, and she declined at the time. She eventually watched it with me at the house. Once it came out on HBO or whatever. But my mother said something to me that I didn't understand until I saw the Derek Chauvin trial. She said, 'I don't need to see a movie about it. I lived it.' Do you watch any of the civil rights films that come out from time to time? Do you partake in any of the films that speak to things from your era?
Charles Person: It took me a while to get to that point. At first, I could not watch it, but I have kids, so you got to be able to sit there and talk with them. And once I came out, let them know that I was involved, because for...I was married to my wife, Joetta, for 10 years before she even knew I was a Freedom Rider. It's just not something that comes up. But after a trip to Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, we saw there ... a reporter was there -
Roy Wood, Jr.: There's a piece of the bus there, in an exhibit.
Charles Person: And so we were able to after that, we started talking about it within the family. And then I started getting invitations to talk to groups and stuff. But it was very painful. I mean, even now, though, I probably break up a lot of times. I have flashbacks, and today there's none of us are very few of us receive any psychological training. I mean, after the events. So we never, in other words - It happened, and we went on with our lives. And for me, even now, sometimes I'm in interviews and If I'm not prepared for a question, I'll shut down. My system will shut down. I'll break down in tears. So a lot of it, like, you feel now. I had an interview doing Black history month for a school, and we had four hours continuous with this group. And at the end of the day, I was... I just couldn't respond because I'm telling them the story, but I'm reliving each moment, and it just really got to me, and I said, 'I'll never do that again knowingly,' because I know that the system just can only take so much. And the kids had such good questions, and they would take me back. And I could see myself in Birmingham. And I could see these guys, and I could see - It's not so much what they said or what they called [out], it's how their faces were contorted with hate. And you wonder, 'How can someone who has never seen me, hate me so much, or my people?' You mind is trying to rationalize what's happening and there's no rationalization to an illogical situation.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Well, the memoir is Buses are A Comin', and I'm going to end one more time on Revered Cox's quote: 'So many others made sacrifices so I'm not a slave. It's my turn to sacrifice on behalf of someone else. We can sacrifice now, Charles, for those we will never know, who will never know of our sacrifice, and will never care we did this. Tell you right now, we care. This nation cares. Black America cares. Charles Person, thank you so much for the honor of just sitting and talking with you about this memoir. It's so meaningful. And I hope to get down to Anniston. I had to get me about - I'm going to take all the vaccines. So once I get all three vaccines in my system, I'm going to be out the door, and I'm going to be down to Anniston and I'm going to visit the Freedom Riders National Monument.
Charles Person: Well, thanks for caring.
Roy Wood, Jr.: Yes, Sir. Thank you so much, brother.
Ranger: Thank you for listening to We Will Rise: National Parks and Civil Rights. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our series. Thank you to the Psalters for use of their song, Turn me 'Round. Until next time.
Description
Welcome to our first episode featuring Charles Person and Roy Wood, Jr. Charles Person was a Freedom Rider. Freedom Riders rode buses across the south to test Supreme Court rulings declaring segregation unconstitutional in restrooms, bus depots, and waiting areas. Roy Wood, Jr. is a comedian, best known for his work on the Daily Show. Raised in Birmingham, he has written that Alabama represents to him “painful history, new hope, and home.” Audio footage courtesy of Freedom Riders Park, Inc.
Date Created
05/26/2021
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