Dianne Reeves said it best in her tweet today: Phoebe Snow sings with the angels today Rest In Peace.
Reading that tweet took me back to Phobe’s first album entitled Phobe Snow. That album contained the hit Poetry Man. It also included some other fantastic cuts such as “I Don’t Want the Night to End”, “Take Your Children Home”, “No Show Tonight”, “It Must Be Sunday” and “Let The Good Times Roll”. Rolling Stone described her nine original compositions in “Phoebe Snow” as “light jazz torch songs” but freer in form and attitude. (Two other songs on the album were her versions of others’ material).As far as this writer is concerned that album is a classic and stands beside Carol King’s Tapestry.
Phobe Snow was blessed with a multi-octave range, giving her a signature voice. I say signature, because whether it was a commercial jingle or an opening song to a television series (“A Different World”) you knew it was Phobe Snow’s voice.
Snow made the cover of Rolling Stone appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and was nominated for a Grammy Award as best new artist. However, she was never able to duplicate her early commercial success. Ms. Snow’s career took a backseat to caring for her daughter, Valerie Rose Laub, who was born in 1975 with severe brain damage as a result of medical malpractice.
“It was very, very tight,” Snow told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008. “Occasionally I put an album out, but I didn’t like to tour and they didn’t get a lot of label support. But you know what? It didn’t really matter because I got to stay home more with Valerie and that time was precious.”
Her marriage to Phil Kearns ,Valerie Rose’s father ended in divorce.
In order to support her daughter, the single Mom sang commercial jingles for such companies as Stouffer’s and General Foods, which she said paid well.
Valerie Rose died in 2007 at the age of 31. A few months later, Snow started performing again, trying to deal with her loss.
“Right now it’s beyond a hole. It’s a black hole,” she told the Record of Bergen County, N.J., in 2008. “I don’t even know how to describe that vacancy because it was such an intense relationship. We lived together for 31 years. She was a perennial child. I was her primary caregiver. … We were best friends. It was beyond a loss. I don’t even know what word to use.”
Snow was born Phoebe Laub on July 17, 1950, in New York City and grew up in Teaneck, N.J. As a youngster she studied piano, then switched to the guitar.
“I always wanted to be the greatest woman guitarist alive,” she told The Times in 1976. “I had fantasies about being a female Jimi Hendrix. I would go to his concerts and watch all the things he did. But I guess I just wasn’t meant to be a superstar guitarist.”
Taking guitar lessons affected her singing style.
“I finally said, ‘I can’t play these guitar lines but maybe I can sing them.’ I tried to sing the way a guitar sounds and the way a saxophone sounds too.”
Her poetry became the basis of her lyrics, and she started playing at New York clubs. She signed with Shelter Records in 1974.
She moved to Columbia Records in 1976 after sometimes nasty legal wrangling with Shelter. “Second Childhood” earned her a second gold record, but subsequent Columbia releases did not sell as well. She left the label at the end of the 1970s.
Snow died today April 27, 2011 in Edison, N.J., her longtime friend and public relations representative, Rick Miramontez, said. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage in January 2010.
As fans we never want to hear that talented people such as Phobe Snow have died. We don’t want the night to end, but unfortunately for me and all her other fans, it has ended for Phobe Snow at the age of 60. She is survived by a sister, Julie Laub.
For more on Phobe Snow’s life please take a look at the CBS Sunday Morning video of above.
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A few years ago, I awaited the showing of a documentary entitled the Murder Of Emmett Till. The film was to be shown at 9:00 PM on WEDU, a PBS station in Tampa, Florida. I had set the station to come on at 9:00 PM. When that time arrived, I found that WEDU had substituted another program in place of the Emmett Till documentary. WEDU did show the film but not until around 3:00 PM the next morning.
I inquired about the scheduling and was told that management found the documentary to be too graphic. I supposed that management was referring to Emmett Till’s corpse which was badly mutilated.
Last week, WEDU held a special screening of the documentary Freedom Riders. The Tampa Theater was packed with a diverse audience, and the program was all inclusive.
Although not on the same level as Emmett Till’s corpse, Freedom Riders was very graphic. You will not walk away not being aware of the violence the initial riders encountered in Alabama and Mississippi. Those young men and women black and white were beaten unmercifully with bats, chains and whatever else those white supremist savages could find in their effort to prevent U.S. citizens of color from exercising our constitutional rights as citizens. In one instance they even attempted to murder the occupants of a Greyhound bus by fire bombing it and preventing the occupants from exiting the burning bus. Such graphic motivated other students both black and white to get involved in the Freedom Riders movement, thus ridding this country of another shameful Jim Crow law.
In the political climate we are currently experiencing, the graphics is also a reminder of who and where we were once upon a time in this country and why we need not re-institute those racial policies which represents a sad chapter of our American history.
The film was well received by the audience who remained for a Q&A session with some Freedom riders living within the the Tampa Bay area. One of the panelist Reverend Dr. Bernard Fayette Jr. grew up in Tampa’s Ybor City.
WEDU is now under new leadership with Susan Howarth at the helm. The local PBS station did an exceptional job in promoting the event, and was awarded by an excellent turn out.
This year WEDU through PBS is showing documentaries pertaining to Black American in different months of the year. This supports Febone1960.net’s signature introductory saying that “Black History Is American History”. Because it is American history, it should be celebrated not just in February which is known as Black History Month but on any of the 365 days of the year.
As a result of the Tampa Theater gathering on April 13, 2011, this writer optimistic that the film will be shown by WEDU at the scheduled 9:00 PM time slot on May 16, 2011.
Hopefully this is the dawning of a new era at WEDU and that the Tampa community will embrace local projects pertaining to not only black Americans, but Latino, Asian and Native Americans as well. This writer is mindful that WEDU has presented some projects such as the history of Central Avenue, but there is more black history to explore within the Tampa bay area. I’m sure this is true in the Latino, Asian and Native American communities as well.
Above are some video highlights of the Freedom Riders screening at the Tampa Theater. Take a look by clicking the play button above.
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Original Stick Pony is how Angela described us as we gathered to provide support to Pat. We all emerged on her childhood home after learning of her mother’s death.
Pat was almost 5 weeks shy of her eighth birthday when I became a life in being. We must have bonded right away for I can’t remember a day that she wasn’t in my life.
When the older kids where out riding their bikes, she would put me in the basket attached to the handle bars of her bicycle and we would ride with her friends.
We all grew up on the southeast of town and attended the same schools at different times. In the particular block where I lived, we also attended the same vacation bible school. When we weren’t riding our stick ponies, we played rolling bat in the street, and hide and seek in the back yards. We also roller skated in the streets, hoola hooped, twisted to Chubby Checker, boogalooed, mashed potatoed and jerked to James Brown and the Motown sound. No MTV or BET for our in crowd. We grew up in the age of Ed Sullivan, Hullabaloo, Shindig and American Bandstand. Soul Train would eventually come years later.
Pat was special to me and I always wanted to follow her everywhere she went; pouting when I was not permitted to do so, which was often.
As she became a teen, she abandoned her stick pony and other child’s play to gather with her girlfriends. Boys, fashion and becoming a majorette was now her new focus. I would watch her as she gathered with Miriam, Fay, and Jeanie on the corner. Sitting on the big rock, they would converse to what seemed to me to be hours. As the street light illuminated, a familiar call would ring out from her mother. Pronouncing each and every syllable sweetly and deliberately, her mother would call out “Patricia, it’s time to come in!”
I would watch as she walked up to her house and ascended up the stone steps of the two story white house with green shutters and awning. Sometimes she would sit on the porch, and sometimes she would go inside. Sometimes my mother would permit me to sit with her if she was on the porch. When the call for me to come home would ring out, she and her dog Rex would walk me to my door. After conversing briefly with my mother she and her chow would return home. Making sure she got back safely, my mother and I would watch until she closed the door to her house. Rex who was the neighborhood alpha dog was not going to let any harm come to her either.
Ms. Dye was in charge of the cheerleaders, majorettes, and dance group at the all black James B. Dudley High School. Pat attended Dudley where her mother also taught. As a majorette, Pat was a Ms. Dye girl. In my community that meant she was an all-American girl. Although she had become a popular teen, she still made time for the little snotty nosed, skinny kid across the street. I can remember her showing me how to twirl the baton between my little fingers. Although she was fantastic and patient with her lessons, it turned out that I was much better at dribbling a basketball.
It wasn’t long before she was off to college. I was sad about her imminent departure until I found out she would come home for holidays. She would matriculate to her father’s Alma Mater, North Carolina Central. Eventually she would give in to the Aggie spirit that permeated our black community and transfer to N.C. A&T State University. That made me happy. It also made her happy because that’s where she would meet the love of her life. Of all her boyfriends, Butch was the only one I liked. She and Butch would eventually marry and spend their lives in the military until Butch retired as a Colonel. Together they raised two beautiful daughters.
I wasn’t quite old enough for my driver’s license when Nik, their first born arrived. Eventually I would get my drivers license and my first car, a Volkswagen. Saturday mornings, I worked a weekend job at Mom’s Variety Store near A&T. Butch had started his military career and was away. So I would drive Pat, and Bobby ( the husband of another original stick pony) to work. I would drop Pat off at Thalhiemers Ellis Stone Department Store. Bobby’s destination was The Slack Shop. Both stores would not hire blacks in sales jobs a decade before. This however changed as a result of Patricia’s participation in the sit movement which started in downtown Greensboro, N.C. on February 1, 1960. In her quest for equality for all people of color, Pat was arrested for her civil disobedience. She was my shero.
Eventually they would move to Fort Bragg. On a few occasions I would drive her there after she would spend the weekends with her mother. I was still in high school and she was now a wife and a mother.
I knew Pat would be a good mother. I also knew how lucky those girls would be. Although she was a no nonsense person she always exhibited a special patience to my immaturity. I couldn’t imagine her not having the same patience with her own children. Pat, Butch and the girls never knew it, but their photos rested in a frame on my credenza in my law office.
Eventually through college, graduate school and law school, maturity set in.
Our fathers, including Angela’s father died the same year. Pat’s mother who was also Angela’s sorority sister would depart this earth a few years later. It wasn’t long after her mother’s death that her first grand child would arrive. This would be the same grand child who would some years later email me to tell me I rocked. This occurred after she viewed her participation in the Febone1960.net Black History Month Calendar. I smiled for days after reading that email. I even found my middle aged self saying with a fist pump “I rock!”
Over the years it was established that Pat was like my big sister for I was closer to her than my own biological older sister. As a result, her counsel I often sought, as well as her validation which was never withheld.
Playing the role of the big sister so well, she never disappointed me. I learned a number of valuable lessons from her. The most important lesson I learned is that people often become angry with you not because you’ve wrong them in some way, but because you happen to be convenient.
Of course we had our differences as well as our moments, but the bond we had established so long ago could not be broken. Not even by distance. We would stay in touch by phone throughout the years. We talked almost daily during the Obama campaign. She also kept up with my Blogs. We would see each other either during homecoming or on one of my trips to the Washington metropolitan area. I would drive out to northern Virginia to see both Pat and her family.
I had planned to see her on one of those trips last fall but it wasn’t in the cards. My Patricia transitioned unexpectedly but peacefully last fall.
Although she is no longer here on earth the bond is still strong within my heart. Not only was she a big sister but she was an original stick pony and will be one forever and a day.
I’m remembering you on your birthday and dedicate the video above to our childhood memories. Happy Birthday Original Stick Pony and may you REST IN PEACE!
PS: Thank you Paula and Butch for helping me to find closure.
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The Freedom Riders were mostly middle aged civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960). The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in the Big Easy (New Orleans) on May 17.
Boynton v. Virginia had outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission (“ICC”) had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. The ICC, however, had failed to enforce its own ruling, and therefore Jim Crow travel laws remained in effect throughout the South.
The Freedom Riders set out to challenge this segregation status quo set of local laws and customs by riding various forms of public transportation in the South. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses.
Most of the subsequent rides were sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), while others belonged to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “Snick”). The Freedom Rides followed on the heels of dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South and boycotts beginning in 1960.
The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances regarding interstate transportation facilities. But the Freedom Riders’ rights were not enforced, and their actions were considered criminal acts throughout most of the South. For example, upon the Riders’ arrival in Mississippi, their journey ended with imprisonment for exercising their legal rights in interstate travel. Similar arrests took place in other Southern cities.
The Freedom Riders were inspired by the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, led by civil rights activists Bayard Rustin ( March on Washington) and George Houser. Like the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Journey of Reconciliation was intended to test an earlier Supreme Court ruling that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel. Rustin and a few of the other riders, chiefly members of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), were arrested and sentenced to serve on a chain gang in North Carolina for violating local Jim Crow laws regarding segregated seating on public transportation.
The first Freedom Ride began on May 4, 1961. Led by CORE Director James Farmer, 13 riders (seven black, six white) left Washington, D.C., on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending with a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana. Most of the Riders were from CORE, and two were from SNCC. Many were in their 40s and 50s.
The Freedom Riders tactics for their journey were to have at least one interracial pair sitting in adjoining seats and at least one black Rider sitting up front (seats usually reserved for white customers only), while the rest would sit scattered throughout the rest of the bus. One rider would abide by the South’s segregation ideals in order to avoid arrest and to contact CORE and arrange bail for those who were arrested.
Only minor trouble was encountered in Virginia and North Carolina, but John Lewis was attacked in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and some of the Riders were arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Winnsboro, South Carolina.
Violence in Alabama was organized by Birmingham Police Sergeant Tom Cook (an avid Ku Klux Klan supporter) and the infamous police commissioner Bull Connor. The pair made plans to bring the Ride to an end in Alabama. They assured Gary Thomas Rowe, an FBI informer and member of Eastview Klavern #13 (the most violent Klan group in Alabama), that the mob would have fifteen minutes to attack the Freedom Riders without any arrests being made. The final plan laid out an initial assault in Anniston with a final assault taking place in Birmingham.
In Anniston, Alabama, a mob attacked the Greyhound bus and slashed its tires. When the crippled bus had to stop several miles outside of town, it was firebombed by the mob chasing it in cars. As the bus burned, the mob held the doors shut, intent on burning the riders to death. Sources disagree, but either an exploding fuel tank or an undercover state investigator brandishing a revolver caused the mob to retreat, allowing the riders to escape the bus. The riders were viciously beaten as they fled the burning bus, and only warning shots fired into the air by highway patrolmen prevented the riders from being lynched.
That night, the hospitalized Freedom Riders, most of whom had been refused care, were removed from the hospital at 2 AM, because the staff feared the mob outside the hospital. Local civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth organized several cars of blacks who defied the mob to rescue the injured Freedom Riders.
When the Trailways bus reached Anniston and pulled in at the terminal an hour after the Greyhound bus was burned, it was boarded by eight Klansmen, who proceeded to beat the Freedom Riders and afterwards left them semi-conscious in the back of the bus. When the bus arrived in Birmingham, it too was attacked by a mob of Ku Klux Klan members, aided and abetted by the police under the orders of Commissioner Bull Connor. As the riders exited the bus, they were mercilessly beaten by the mob with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains. Among the Klansmen attacking the riders was FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe. White Freedom Riders were particularly singled out for frenzied beatings; James Peck required more than 50 stitches to the wounds in his head. Peck was taken to Carraway Methodist Medical Center, which refused to treat him; he was later treated at Jefferson Hillman Hospital.
When reports of the bus burning and beatings reached US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, he urged restraint on the part of Freedom Riders and sent an assistant, John Seigenthaler, to Alabama to try to calm the situation.
Despite the violence suffered already and the threat of more to come, the Freedom Riders desired to continue their journey. Kennedy had arranged an escort for the Riders in order to get them to Montgomery safely. However, radio reports told of the mob awaiting the riders at the bus terminal, as well as on the route to Montgomery. The Greyhound clerks also informed them that their drivers were refusing to drive any Freedom Riders anywhere. The Riders agreed that their efforts had already called great attention to the civil rights cause and that if they encountered any more delays, then they would miss the rally in New Orleans. Taking all this into consideration, the Riders decided that their best option was to abandon the rest of the Ride and fly directly to New Orleans from Birmingham.
Nashville student and SNCC leader Diane Nash felt that if violence were allowed to halt the Freedom Rides, the movement would be set back years. She pushed to find replacements to resume the ride, and, on May 17, a new set of riders, 10 students from Nashville, took a bus to Birmingham, where they were arrested by Bull Connor and jailed. These students kept their spirits up in jail by singing freedom songs. Out of frustration, Connor drove them back up to the Tennessee line and dropped them off, stating, “I just couldn’t stand their singing.” They immediately returned to Birmingham.
The Freedom Riders who had answered SNCC’s call from across the Eastern US joined John Lewis and Hank Thomas, the two young SNCC members of the original Ride who had remained in Birmingham. On May 19, they attempted to resume the ride, but, terrified by the howling mob surrounding the bus depot, the drivers refused. Harassed and besieged by the KKK mob, the riders waited all night for a bus.
Under intense public pressure from the Kennedy administration, Greyhound was forced to provide a driver, and Alabama Governor John Patterson reluctantly promised to protect the bus from KKK mobs and snipers on the road between Birmingham and Montgomery after direct intervention from Attorney General’s office employee Byron White. On the morning of May 20, the Freedom Ride resumed, with the bus carrying the riders traveling toward Montgomery at 90 miles an hour protected by a contingent of the Alabama State Highway Patrol.
However, when they reached the Montgomery city limits, the Highway Patrol abandoned them. At the bus station on South Court Street, a white mob awaited and beat the Freedom Riders with baseball bats and iron pipes. The local police allowed the beatings to go on uninterrupted.
Again, white Freedom Riders were singled out for particularly brutal beatings. Reporters and news photographers were attacked first and their cameras destroyed, but there is a famous picture taken later of Jim Zwerg in the hospital, beaten and bruised. Justice Department official Seigenthaler was beaten and left unconscious lying in the street. Ambulances refused to take the wounded to the hospital. Local blacks rescued them, and a number of the Freedom Riders were hospitalized.
On the following night, Sunday, May 21, more than 1500 people packed Reverend Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church to honor the Freedom Riders. Among the speakers were Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Farmer. Outside, a mob of more than 3,000 whites attacked blacks, with a handful of the United States Marshals Service protecting the church from assault and fire bombs. With city and state police making no effort to restore order, President Kennedy threatened to commit federal troops, but Governor Patterson forestalled that by ordering the Alabama National Guard to disperse the mob.[
On the next day, Monday, May 22, more Freedom Riders from CORE and SNCC arrived in Montgomery to continue the rides and replace the wounded riders still in the hospital. Behind the scenes, the Kennedy administration arranged a deal with the governors of Alabama and Mississippi. The governors agreed that state police and the National Guard would protect the Riders from mob violence (thereby ending embarrassing media coverage of bloody lawlessness), and, in return, the federal government would not intervene to stop local police from arresting Freedom Riders for violating segregation ordinances when the buses arrived at the depots (even though such arrests violated the Supreme Court’s Boynton decision).
On Wednesday morning, May 24, Freedom Riders boarded buses for the journey to Jackson, Mississippi. Surrounded by Highway Patrol and the National Guard, the buses arrived in Jackson without incident, and the riders were immediately arrested when they tried to use the white-only facilities at the depot. In Montgomery, Freedom Riders including Yale University chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Gaylord Brewster Noyce, Shuttlesworth, Abernathy, Wyatt Tee Walker, and others were similarly arrested for violating local segregation ordinances.
This established a pattern followed by subsequent Freedom Rides, most of which traveled to Jackson, where they were arrested and jailed. The strategy became one of trying to fill the jails. Once the Jackson and Hinds County jails were filled to overflowing, Freedom Riders were transferred to the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary (“Parchman Farm”). Their abusive treatment included placement in the Maximum Security Unit (Death Row), issuance of only underwear, no exercise, no mail, and, when Freedom Riders refused to stop singing freedom songs, they took away mattresses, sheets, and toothbrushes and removed the screens from the windows. When the cell block became filled with mosquitoes, they hosed everyone down with DDT at 2 AM.
Some of the notable freedom riders were as follows: Stokely Carmichael, James L. Farmer, Jr.,
US Representative Bob Filner (D-CA), US Representative John Lewis (D-GA), William Mahoney, Wally Nelson, James Peck, and Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson and Diane Nash.
The Kennedys called for a “cooling off period” and condemned the Rides as unpatriotic because they embarrassed the nation on the world stage. Attorney General Robert Kennedy—the chief law-enforcement officer of the land—was quoted as saying that he “does not feel that the Department of Justice can side with one group or the other in disputes over Constitutional rights.”
Defying the Kennedys, CORE, SNCC, and SCLC rejected any “cooling off period”. They formed a Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee to keep the Rides rolling through June, July, August, and September. During those months, more than 60 different Freedom Rides criss-crossed the South, most of them converging on Jackson, where every Rider was arrested, more than 300 in total, plus an unknown number of riders arrested in other Southern towns. It is estimated that almost 450 riders participated in one or more Freedom Rides. About 75% were male, and the same percentage were under the age of 30, mostly evenly divided between black and white.
During the summer of 1961, Freedom Riders also campaigned against other forms of racial discrimination. They sat together in segregated restaurants, lunch counters and hotels. This was especially effective when it targeted large companies, which, fearing boycotts in the North, began to desegregate their businesses.
In mid-June, a group of Freedom Riders had scheduled to end their ride in Tallahassee, Florida, with plans to fly home from the Tallahassee airport. They were provided a police escort to the airport from the city’s bus facilities. At the airport, they decided to eat at a restaurant that was signed “For Whites Only”. The owners decided to close rather than serve the Freedom Riders. Although the restaurant was privately owned, it was leased from the county government. Canceling their plane reservations, the Riders decided to wait until the restaurant re-opened so they could be served. They waited until 11:00 pm that night and returned the following day. During this time, hostile crowds gathered, threatening violence. On June 16, 1961, the Freedom Riders were arrested in Tallahassee for unlawful assembly. That arrest became known as Dresner v. City of Tallahassee, which made its way to the US Supreme Court in 1963, in which a hearing was refused based on technical reasons.
On May 29, 1961, bowing to the demands of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders, as well as international outrage, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in an unorthodox legal maneuver, sent a petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to comply with a bus-desegregation ruling it had issued in November, 1955, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. That ruling had explicitly repudiated separate but equal in the realm of interstate bus travel, but, under the chairmanship of South Carolina Democrat J. Monroe Johnson, the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling.
In September 1961, bowing to pressure from the Attorney General and the civil rights movement, the ICC issued the necessary orders, and the new policies went into effect on November 1, 1961, a full six years after the ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. After the new ICC rule took effect, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains, “white” and “colored” signs came down in the terminals, separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated, and the lunch counters began serving people regardless of race.
The Freedom Rides sent shock waves through American society. People worried that the Rides were evoking widespread social disorder and racial divergence. This attitude was supported and strengthened in many communities by the press. The press in white communities condemned the direct action approach CORE was taking, while the national press negatively portrayed the Riders.
Yet, the Freedom Rides established great credibility with blacks and whites throughout the United States, who became motivated to engage in direct action for civil rights. Perhaps most significantly, Freedom Riders, facing such danger on their behalf, impressed blacks living in rural areas throughout the South who later formed the backbone of the civil rights movement. This credibility inspired many subsequent civil rights campaigns, including voter registration, freedom schools, and the black power movement.
PBS will be airing a film about this historical event which will be celebrating its’ 50th year anniversary. The film is directed by Peabody award winning film maker Stanley Nelson. A telephone interview with Nelson by Febone1960.net can be heard above.
Below is a video discussing a PBS event encouraging the young people to learn about civil disobedience. Take a look at both.
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We all get a little frustrated with inattentive drivers, but the latest case of road rage coming out of Atlanta is inexcusable.
A 4 year old toddler by the name of Korda Bailey was shot in the buttocks while strapped in his car seat. It is unclear what led to male and female occupant of an alleged white Durango Suv to shoot into the back of the vehicle driven by the toddler’s mother. As far as this writer is concerned there can be no excuse for such violent behavior which resulted in the wounding of an innocent child. The bottom line: it’s just plan inexcusable stupidity.
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