Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change

by John Lewis

In 1961, thirteen original Freedom Riders, seven blacks and six whites, left Washington, D.C., traveling on a Greyhound to New Orleans. We sat in an integrated fashion on the bus to test a Supreme Court ruling that rendered segregation in interstate transportation illegal. Although this new law had been passed, states in the Deep South continued racially discriminating, forcing blacks to sit in the back of the bus and to surrender their seats to standing whites. Most bus stations still posted white waiting and colored waiting signs. Our plan was to challenge this injustice. Typically when a train or bus traveling south from New York City, for example, would get below the Mason Dixon line, the black passengers would be asked to get up from their seats and move to the back of the bus. Our plan was for black and white Freedom Riders to simply remain seated next to each other. And when we got off the bus and entered the stations, white riders would use restrooms marked colored and black riders would use restrooms and facilities marked white. It was that simple, but I knew the farther South we traveled, the more likely we would be to run into violence. No matter how bad the beatings were we would not physically fight back. Ours was a nonviolent mission. We knew it was dangerous, and all of us wrote out our last requests before we boarded the bus in case we did not return. On the Freedom Ride, I was prepared to die.