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WaPo: Charles Person, youngest of the Freedom Riders, dies at 82 [View all]
WaPo - (archive: https://archive.ph/LHwkC ) Charles Person, youngest of the Freedom Riders, dies at 82
Bruised and bloodied while traveling through the South in 1961, he challenged segregation on interstate buses and in terminal waiting rooms.
January 10, 2025 at 10:03 p.m. EST
By Harrison Smith
Charles Person, the youngest of the 13 original Freedom Riders, who were battered, bloodied and nearly killed as they traveled across the South in 1961, helping the civil rights movement gain momentum as they protested segregation on interstate bus lines, died Jan. 8 at his home in Fayetteville, Georgia. He was 82.
The cause was complications from leukemia, said his daughter Keisha Person.
Mr. Person was 18 when he stepped aboard a Trailways bus in Washington on May 4, 1961, joining a dozen other Black and White activists bound for New Orleans. Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, known as CORE, the group aimed to challenge segregation in interstate bus travel, which persisted even after it was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Bathrooms, waiting rooms and lunch counters at Southern bus terminals still bore signs reading “White” and “Colored,” and Black passengers were routinely forced to the back of the bus.
“We thought the worst that could happen was ketchup or condiments being thrown at us, or someone might spit on us,” Mr. Person recalled in a September interview with the Atlanta Voice. He was, he often said, “too young to be scared.”
Mr. Person was only a freshman at Morehouse College in Atlanta. But he had attracted the attention of CORE recruiters after spending 16 days in jail for participating in a sit-in — he said that when he joined the other incarcerated activists in protest songs, he sang so loudly he was sent to solitary confinement — and was invited on the original Freedom Ride as a representative of the Atlanta student movement, alongside activists that included future congressman John Lewis.
/snip
Bruised and bloodied while traveling through the South in 1961, he challenged segregation on interstate buses and in terminal waiting rooms.
January 10, 2025 at 10:03 p.m. EST
By Harrison Smith
Charles Person, the youngest of the 13 original Freedom Riders, who were battered, bloodied and nearly killed as they traveled across the South in 1961, helping the civil rights movement gain momentum as they protested segregation on interstate bus lines, died Jan. 8 at his home in Fayetteville, Georgia. He was 82.
The cause was complications from leukemia, said his daughter Keisha Person.
Mr. Person was 18 when he stepped aboard a Trailways bus in Washington on May 4, 1961, joining a dozen other Black and White activists bound for New Orleans. Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, known as CORE, the group aimed to challenge segregation in interstate bus travel, which persisted even after it was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Bathrooms, waiting rooms and lunch counters at Southern bus terminals still bore signs reading “White” and “Colored,” and Black passengers were routinely forced to the back of the bus.
“We thought the worst that could happen was ketchup or condiments being thrown at us, or someone might spit on us,” Mr. Person recalled in a September interview with the Atlanta Voice. He was, he often said, “too young to be scared.”
Mr. Person was only a freshman at Morehouse College in Atlanta. But he had attracted the attention of CORE recruiters after spending 16 days in jail for participating in a sit-in — he said that when he joined the other incarcerated activists in protest songs, he sang so loudly he was sent to solitary confinement — and was invited on the original Freedom Ride as a representative of the Atlanta student movement, alongside activists that included future congressman John Lewis.
/snip
Cross gently, Mr Person.
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