News
Remembering the Freedom Riders
This week, civil rights activists are celebrated in a much-changed American South
By Bobby harrison
of The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
JaCkSon, Miss. (AP) — Flonzie Brown-Wright was
an 18-year-old from Mississippi living in Los Angeles
when the Freedom Riders reached Jackson in May 1961.
After seeing reports that summer on the arrests of the
Freedom Riders, she called her mother to ask what was
happening in her home state.
“I didn’t have a clue what was going on,’’ she recalled last
week. “My mother and daddy protected me.’’
In hindsight, Brown-Wright said, she never wondered
why, as she walked to school each day, busloads of white
students passed her. That was just the way it was.
Brown-Wright returned to Mississippi in 1963 and soon
became involved in the civil rights movement. She admits,
however, that she wasn’t a willing participant until then-
NAACP state director Medgar Evers was shot dead in front
of his wife and children as he returned to his Jackson home
one night.
Today, Wright sits outside her office at the historic Ayer
Hall on the Jackson State campus where she is working as
the office manager to help coordinate the 50th anniversary
of the Freedom Rides. She works her cell phone like a
teenager, texting in between answering questions.
About 100 Freedom Riders will be on hand for this
week’s events.
In a speech to the Mississippi Economic Council earlier
this year, Henry “Hank’’ Thomas of Stone Mountain, Ga.,
national chairman of the Freedom Riders, said, “After 50
years, American has evolved. The South has changed.
Mississippi has changed.’’
Thomas said the anniversary observance would be a “reli-
gious, racial, reconciliation time.’’
Planned events include the placing of Freedom Trail
Markers by the state in key locales of the civil rights move-
ment, including Jackson’s Trailways Bus Station, where
many Freedom Riders were arrested, and at Parchman pen-
itentiary, where many were incarcerated.
Seminars during the week will cover the Freedom Riders
and their impact on the civil rights movement, with partici-
pants talking about their experiences.
Wright said everyone associated with the event is pleased
with the reception the Freedom Riders are receiving.
“We knew from the reception of people it was going to be
big,’’ she said. “But I don’t think we realized the magni-
tude.’’
Wright said it was the Freedom Riders who spurred the
Freedom Riders in the ‘60s sit next to a bus that had been firebombed
civil rights movement and the ensuring changes that
allowed her become the first black female elected official in
the state.
She won the office of Madison County election commis-
sioner in 1968 and had the privilege of registering her
father, a successful plumber-electrician, to vote.
“The Freedom Riders got the attention of President
Kennedy,’’ she said.
At that point the federal government became involved in
bringing change to the South.
In the 1960s, the Freedom Riders were greeted in Jackson
with abuse and incarceration. Now, 50 years later, many of
them are back in town.
We honor the many
accomplishments of
African Americans.
And, says Flonzie Brown-Wright, she’s glad to be with
them this time.
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Page 8 The Portland Skanner May 25, 2011