USA TODAY: ANNISTON, Ala. —… Walk through this small industrial town in northeast Alabama and it looks much like it did 50 years ago. The light brick one-story building on Gurnee Avenue that once housed the Greyhound bus depot is on the same corner. So is the police station in the next block….
Back then, Thomas was a 19-year-old black college student facing an angry mob of white people who firebombed and slashed the tires of the Greyhound bus in which he and other students, black and white, were riding as part of a protest known as the Freedom Rides. Police did nothing as the choking riders fled the flaming bus…
Today, black people work at almost every level of city government. Two black men are on the five-member City Council, 50 of the city’s 378 employees are black, and there are seven black officers on the 96-member police force. The library board and other civic commissions have black members… ( more)
EDITOR: For understanding of the courage and contribution to civil rights of the Freedom Riders, we recommend Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis and Michael D’Orso (Oct 18, 1999).
Congressman Lewis is one of our greatest Americans.
