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Memoir of a Freedom Rider
by Charles Person, Richard Rooker
Book Reviewed by:A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward - written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers.
At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement who left Washington, D.C. by bus in 1961, headed for New Orleans. This purposeful mix of black and white, male and female activists―including future Congressman John Lewis, Congress of Racial Equality Director James Farmer, Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox, journalist and pacifist James Peck, and CORE field secretary Genevieve Hughes―set out to discover whether America would abide by a Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation unconstitutional in bus depots, waiting areas, restaurants, and restrooms nationwide.
The Freedom Riders found their answer. No. Southern states would continue to disregard federal law and use violence to enforce racial segregation. One bus was burned to a shell; the second, which Charles rode, was set upon by a mob that beat the Riders nearly to death.
Buses Are a Comin' provides a front-row view of the struggle to belong in America, as Charles leads his colleagues off the bus, into the station, into the mob, and into history to help defeat segregation's violent grip on African American lives. It is also a challenge from a teenager of a previous era to the young people of today: become agents of transformation. Stand firm. Create a more just and moral country where students have a voice, youth can make a difference, and everyone belongs.
Life in the Bottom
Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is and what he had done to one life multiplied millions of times over these United States and the world. He walks us on a tightrope from birth.
1
Our neighbor had a peach tree in his yard. A vegetable garden, too. I loved fruit. So did my cousin, Kenneth Booker. We craved juicy flavors created by sinking our teeth into tree-ripe Georgia peaches.
We felt the fuzz on the fruit and checked our chins to see if we were growing any. Neither Kenneth nor I were yet ten years old. No fuzz.
Our neighbor was—who knew how old? Thirty? Fifty? One hundred twenty? In the early 1950s, kids didn't know the ages of adults. They were adults. They were old. We were kids—young, full of fun, and hungry.
The sun was hot. Summers in Atlanta can be sweltering. Swelter builds thirst. Thirst builds temptation. Temptation yields to naughty.
Some days Kenneth and I pretended we were marines fighting in Korea in the bitter ...
The lion's share of the narrative concerns the Freedom Rides, but every chapter is peppered with references to other important moments and people in the Civil Rights Movement, as well as ties to current events such as the murder of George Floyd and Colin Kaepernick's taking a knee at NFL games. As such, the book is not only a memoir and a snapshot of a critical juncture in America's history, but extremely relevant to our current state of affairs. Person's prose flows smoothly between these subjects in a conversational tone; the fact that his account is so evidently personal heightens its impact on the audience...continued
Full Review
(953 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Derek Catsam, Professor of History and Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities, University of Texas-Permian Basin, and author of Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides
Buses Are a Comin' is the most complete recounting we have of any of the Freedom Riders' experiences during those epochal days of 1961, and is at times lyrical, always insightful, and reveals a true American hero who is humble and appreciative. But Charles Person also subtly wants to exhort others, this and future generations, to 'get on the bus' and challenge inequality and injustice. Rev. Dr. Carolyn M McKinstry, author of While the World Watched
Charles Person's book is a very personal, poignant and political account of his life's evolution. It is especially revelatory for young males (of any ethnicity) in their sacred search for 'self, relevance and calling.' It is a vivid personal snapshot of his coming of age. He fully exposes his life's journey: genuinely and movingly. His legacy is well established in this writing. He reminds us of the debt that we owe for the life that we have been given; and that to whom much is given and entrusted, much more is required. William H. Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History, emeritus, Duke University; former president, Organization of American Historians, author of Civilities and Civil Rights and The Rise and Fall of the American Century
A compelling narrative, rich in its description of the searing brutality of white racists opposed to the Freedom Rides of 1961, powerful in its depiction of the courage of civil rights protestors.
In his memoir Buses Are a Comin', Charles Person explains that he got involved with the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-1960s through fellow students at his school, Morehouse College, which is one of the country's oldest Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
The HBCU designation was created by the Higher Education Act of 1965, which defines an HBCU as "any historically black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans, and that is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting agency or association."
The first all-Black institute of higher learning in the American South was Shaw University, founded in Raleigh, North...
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