Freedom Riders' 1947 Convictions Vacated in North Carolina
Source: AP News
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (AP) — Legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and three other men who were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina after they launched the first of the “freedom rides” to challenge Jim Crow laws had their convictions posthumously vacated Friday, more than seven decades later.
“We failed these men,” said Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour, who presided over the special session and at one point paused to gather himself after becoming emotional. “We failed their cause and we failed to deliver justice in our community,” Baddour said. “And for that, I apologize. So we’re doing this today to right a wrong, in public, and on the record.”
Speaking to about 100 people in the gallery, Baddour noted they were gathered in the same second-story courtroom in the historic courthouse where the men were initially sentenced.
On April 9, 1947, a group of eight white men and eight Black men began the first “freedom ride” to challenge laws that mandated segregation on buses in defiance of the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court Morgan v. Virginia ruling declaring segregation on interstate travel unconstitutional...
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-government-politics-eb1a6308edb82eb271ed92c32dbe432d
- Bayard Rustin, deputy director of the planned march on Washington program, points to a map showing the line of march for the demonstration for civil rights during a news conference in New York on Aug. 24, 1963. (AP Photo)
- Amy Zowniriw, niece of Igal Roodenko, applauds an announcement by a judge in Hillsborough, N.C., Friday, June 17, 2022, that the conviction of her uncle, civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, and 2 other men were vacated. The 4 men were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina after they were arrested in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 1947 during one of the early freedom rides. (AP Photo).
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given that Ruskin was a gay man as well. These brave souls made some huge sacrifices to move the needle and this vacating of the convictions were a LOOOONNNNGGGGG time coming! 
thank you for posting.
