Former Freedom Riders remember the struggles

The anger that led Lewis Zuchman and Luvaghn Brown to self-destructive moments as teenagers ultimately fueled their dedication to a movement.

Zuchman grew up white and Jewish in New York. He quit college and served time in jail before he was 19. Brown, an African American in segregated Mississippi, ran away from an abusive family life and was prone to raise his fists in an instant.

They met as teenage Freedom Riders in the early 1960s, part of a historic nonviolent movement that helped force the desegregation of transportation services in the South.

"It was a reasonable way to fight what I wanted to fight all along but didn't know how," said Brown, now 67.

Brown and Zuchman, 70, reminisced on Saturday at a discussion and film screening about the Freedom Rides at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. The event was part of programming associated with an exhibit of 82 mixed-media portraits of Freedom Riders by New York artist Charlotta Janssen.

Four of the Riders recounted their protest experiences before an audience of 85.

In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) challenged the segregation of transportation services in the South. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled the segregation illegal, but Southern states continued the practice.

Thirteen protesters - black and white members of CORE and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) - boarded two buses in Washington and traveled south.

One bus was firebombed. Riders were beaten with bats and denied treatment at hospitals. The violence ended the ride and President John F. Kennedy sent federal officials to fly the demonstrators to New Orleans, their final destination.

News of the Riders' efforts inspired others and more Freedom Riders took up the cause. One of them was Terry Perlman Hickerson of New York City, then a college student.

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Former Freedom Riders remember the struggles