[Vision2020] My Friend the Freedom Rider: Confronting Christian Terrorism in America's South

Tue May 17 09:25:38 PDT 2011

And, given the 2011 presence of groups like the League of the South, Sons
and Daughters of the Confederacy, and crackpot histories like "Southern
Slavery As It Was"  by Moscow's own Doug Wilson, the struggle continues even
in this little North Idaho town.

Rose Huskey

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Ron Force
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 7:54 AM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] My Friend the Freedom Rider: Confronting Christian
Terrorism in America's South

The program ends in triumph, with the signs of Jim Crow (white only, colored
waiting room) being discarded by Interstate Commerce Commission fiat in
1961... except. When my wife visited me in Texas in 1964, the signs were
still very much in evidence in Texas RR stations. The struggle went on for a
long time.

  _____  

From: Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>; 
To: Rosemary Huskey <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com>; 
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com <vision2020 at moscow.com>; aik at cheqnet.net
<aik at cheqnet.net>; 
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] My Friend the Freedom Rider: Confronting Christian
Terrorism in America's South 
Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 6:15:58 AM 

I have just finished watching it on KSPS.  

Two hours, commercial-free, VERY enlightening, detailed.  Information and
photos not previously shown on television.

DEFINITELY worth the watch.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown

On May 16, 2011, at 23:01, "Rosemary Huskey" <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com
<javascript:return> > wrote:

> I urge everyone to watch Freedom Riders: American Experience.  The courage
> and dignity of the men and women who risked their lives for equality
should
> serve as a source of inspiration to all of us.  
> Rose Huskey
> 
> 
> ing Christian Terrorism in America's South
> 
> Tonight on KUID PTV "Freedom Riders: American Experience" in our
> digital age, with KUID offering four channels, will appear at
> different times, on different KUID digital channels.  I checked the
> guide directly off the KUID signal (not cable or satellite) and it
> indicates it will show at 9 PM.
> 
> The schedule showing at this moment at the following website
> (indicating "Mountain Time") may or may not conform to KUID's
> broadcast in all respects:
> 
> http://idahoptv.org/schedules/
> ------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
> 
> On 5/13/11, nickgier at roadrunner.com <javascript:return>
<nickgier at roadrunner.com <javascript:return> > wrote:
>> Good Morning Visionaries,
>> 
>> This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  In addition to my
three
>> newspapers it will also appear in the Idaho County Free Press in
>> Grangeville.
>> 
>> Ed Kale grew up in Grangeville and he came back to the UI for graduate
> work
>> in philosophy in the 1980s.  He now runs a kayak business on Madeleine
>> Island in Lake Superior.  His mug shots from the Jackson jail are
> attached.
>> 
>> Ed and 177 others appeared on Oprah on May 4th and then all of them had a
>> reunion in Chicago to celebrate their 50th anniversary.
>> 
>> Read all of my columns on civil rights at
>> www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/CivilRights.htm.
>> 
>> I raise my glass to all of these brave Americans!
>> 
>> Nick
>> 
>> MY FRIEND THE FREEDOM RIDER: Confronting Christian Terrorists in
America's
>> South
>> 
>> As an African American woman born in Mississippi in 1954,
>> I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Freedom Riders.
>> I know my life would be different were it not for them.
>> 
>> -Oprah Winfrey
>> 
>> I've waited 80 years for you to come.
>> 
>> -son of a Mississippi slave welcomes Freedom Riders
>> 
>> Oprah Winfrey's May 4th show celebrated the 50th anniversary of the
> Freedom
>> Riders, who challenged southern political leaders to obey federal
>> desegregation laws. My good friend Ed Kale, a native of Grangeville, was
> one
>> of 178 Freedom Riders honored by Oprah and her audience.
>> 
>> In 1961 Ed, 24-years-old, was a student at Yale Divinity School, where
one
>> of his professors paid for his expenses to join the Riders.  The first
> group
>> had already started out on May 4th from Washington, D.C. As the 13 Riders
>> crossed the Alabama state line, their buses were attacked and one was
>> burned.  As the occupants fled in terror, they were beaten by a Klu Klux
>> Klan mob organized by Bull Connor, Alabama's Police Commissioner.
>> 
>> One of those beaten was John Lewis-then a 21-year-old student from
> American
>> Baptist College and now a congressman from Georgia. The man who attacked
> him
>> was former Klansman Elwin Wilson, who was sitting next to Lewis on
Oprah's
>> show. Wilson apologized for the beating- the only apology that Lewis ever
>> received for the many blows he took as a civil rights leader. Lewis'
words
>> still ring in Wilson's mind: "We're not here to cause trouble; we're here
>> for people to love each other."
>> 
>> The first Freedom Riders were forced to quit because no transport
> companies
>> (private or public) would take them any farther. The second wave of
Riders
>> was not, however, deterred. In Nashville Diane Nash, 23-year-old member
of
>> the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, declared that they were
> "the
>> fresh troops." On May 21 Nash and 20 other students were attacked by the
>> Klan at the Montgomery bus station.
>> 
>> The Riders sought refuge in the First Baptist Church, where they met
1,500
>> supporters. Outside over 3,000 whites shouted racial epithets and threw
>> bricks through the windows. Fearing yet another conflagration (five
>> Montgomery churches had been bombed in 1957), Martin Luther King, Jr.,
who
>> had now joined the activists, telephoned Robert Kennedy and asked for
>> federal intervention.
>> 
>> Kennedy said that he would act only if the Riders agreed to go home and
> have
>> a "cooling off period." Nash's group refused, and civil rights leader
> James
>> Farmer supported the decision with this famous statement: "We've been
>> cooling off for 350 years. If we cool off anymore, we will be in a deep
>> freeze. The Freedom Ride will go on."
>> 
>> The Alabama National Guard was called in to form a human shield around
the
>> church and escort the Riders to Jackson, Mississippi. My friend Ed Kale
> and
>> his colleagues arrived in Jackson on June 7th, and they were immediately
>> arrested along with Nash's group from Montgomery. Ed wears his booking
>> pictures, which he sent me recently, as a badge of honor.
>> 
>> After filling up all the jails and refusing bail, Ed and 300 other
Freedom
>> Riders were transferred to Mississippi's notorious Parchman Prison Farm.
>> They were locked up in maximum security and issued T-shirts and
underwear.
>> As punishment for singing all the time, the Riders' mattresses and sheets
>> were taken away.
>> 
>> For 80 years the South had been under a reign of terror organized by
> people
>> who were, except for a few exceptions, never convicted for the vicious
>> assaults and murders they committed.  They claimed to be protecting
>> Christian civilization from race mixing and then from atheistic
Communism.
>> For the Klu Klux Klan civil rights activists were "agents of Satan
>> determined to destroy Christian civilization." FBI Director Jay Edgar
> Hoover
>> was convinced it was a Communist conspiracy and that Martin Luther King
> was
>> a Marxist-Leninist.  In reality, as Elwin Wilson realized in John Lewis'
>> loving gesture to him, they were Gandhian satyagrahis, nonviolent agents
> for
>> the "force of truth."
>> 
>> At the end of the summer some truth did win out. Segregated buses and
>> restaurants with their "whites only" signs came down.  In 1963 President
>> Kennedy called for a new Civil Rights Bill, putting teeth in the one of
>> 1875, which Southerners had ignored.  The legislation was blocked by
>> Southern senators until President Lyndon Johnson was able to pass the
bill
>> in 1964.  The Freedom Riders, once declared as hopeless idealists or
> outside
>> agitators, were slowly but surely transformed into heroes.
>> 
>> Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for
31
>> years.
>> 
> 
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