Dear Editor,
Sixty-five years ago, almost exactly at this time of year, seven Black and six white activists calling themselves the Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C. on a bus together, determined to sit together at lunch counters throughout the South.
However, the Bull Connors of the South reacted so poorly to this peaceful way of making a point that the buses were eventually set ablaze, and the peaceful activists were thrown in jail. The news of the day quickly picked up the story, and the world soon saw the cruelty of segregation firsthand and joined together in support of these young men’s activism. People from all over headed south to protest with them.
Now, thankfully, we all sit at lunch counters together and don’t even think about it. Sadly, few people even know about this story anymore, yet it demonstrates how everyday people can improve the world.
When Major League Baseball moved its All-Star game from Atlanta to Colorado in 2021, as a Georgian, I started to ask myself, where are we going as a country? When sports started getting political, I felt an urge to act, so I tracked down the two remaining members of the Freedom Riders: Charles Person, who was 18 when he participated, and Hank Thomas, who was 19 at the time.
In January 2022, Joe Biden came down to Atlanta and said Georgia’s new voting laws represented “Jim Crow 2.0.” I took offense at this suggestion. The original Jim Crow laws represented outright violent racism. The current voting laws are not the same at all, and it hurts me to hear such hyperbolic dissension.
I ended up befriending Charles Person. I was a white man reaching out to a Black man, not so rare anymore, but what was rare is that I am a Republican, he was a Democrat, and we discussed our differing views amicably and informatively. How novel these days.
It concerns me for our country. I greatly admired Charles Person, and this award is a way of honoring him, a great American hero whom we lost last January.
In his late 70s, Charles wrote the book Buses Are A-Comin” about his Freedom Riders experience, and when I asked him why he wrote it, he answered, “I didn’t want history to be forgotten.”
Early this month, I honored six students at Putnam County High School for taking on the challenge of the Charles Person Freedom Readers to read Buses Are A-Comin’ and write a book report about it. I presented the top report writer, Mia, with a $2,000 check.
Two others responded but used AI for their essays. No comment.
Additionally, I will purchase and provide Putnam High, Greene County High School, and Gatewood Schools with enough copies of Buses Are A-Comin’ for next year’s senior classes to read about the Freedom Riders during Black History Month.
We commend each of the participating students for their activism in taking on the challenge, as Charles did at 18. In essence, we all should be Freedom Readers, learning about those who bravely moved our country forward. May we all do so together each day comin’.
Randall Harman, Putnam County