Listen to excerpts of audio from the event. (Excerpt 1; Excerpt 2)
The public is invited to experience “living history” Friday, Jan. 26, as those involved in the historic 1961 Freedom Rides discuss their experiences and talk about race relations in Nashville during the civil rights movement.
Vanderbilt University‘s Office of Active Citizenship and Service and Fisk University have partnered to host the panel discussion scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. at Fisk Memorial Chapel. The event is free.
A performance by folk music artists Guy and Candie Carawan will precede the panel discussion. The Carawans are noted for their participation in the civil rights movement and adaptation of the song, “We Shall Overcome,” into the anthem of the movement.
In 1961, black and white volunteers traveled by bus to Alabama and Mississippi to fight segregation on public transit systems. Despite recent federal rulings that it was unconstitutional to segregate bus riders, many Southern cities, such as Birmingham and Montgomery, had yet to give up the practice. The volunteers‘ efforts, coined the Freedom Rides, were met with violence from angry mobs in the South.
Nashville played a critical role in the Freedom Rides. It was here that many of the volunteers received training in the principles of non-violent protest under the tutelage of the Rev. James Lawson, now Distinguished University Professor at Vanderbilt. As a young man, Lawson studied the Gandhian movement in India and was dubbed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “the leading nonviolence theorist in the world.”
Lawson will participate in Friday‘s panel discussion at Fisk, and joining him are Bernard Lafayette, Congressman John Lewis, Salynn McCollum, Diane Nash, John Seigenthaler, the Rev. C.T. Vivian and Jim Zwerg. Professor Raymond Arsenault, author of the 2006 book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, will moderate the discussion. Arsenault is John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.
Lafayette is co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a leader of the Nashville movement and participant in the 1961 Freedom Ride and 1965 Selma, Ala., movement. He directs the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at the University of Rhode Island.
Lewis served as chairman of SNCC and has been recognized as one of the primary leaders of the civil rights movement. He was an organizer and a keynote speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, D.C., and in 1965 he led marchers into what would become known as “Bloody Sunday,” one of the most dramatic nonviolent protests of the movement. He currently represents Georgia‘s fifth congressional district, which includes Atlanta.
McCollum participated in the Freedom Ride to Alabama. She and other riders were arrested by Birmingham police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor and he personally escorted the group to the Alabama-Tennessee state line.
Nash was involved in many of the major civil rights demonstrations. She was active in the Nashville student movement and a founding member of SNCC before working with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Seigenthaler served as administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. His work in the field of civil rights led to his service as chief negotiator with the governor of Alabama during the Freedom Rides. He is chairman emeritus of The Tennessean newspaper and founded the First Amendment Center in 1991.
Vivian founded the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference, organizing the first sit-ins here in 1960 and the first civil rights march in 1961. He rode the first “Freedom Bus” to Jackson, Miss., and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. on his executive staff. He recently launched the organization Churches Supporting Churches in response to the help needed for victims and churches affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Zwerg, a white college student from Wisconsin participated in the 1961 Freedom Ride. A student at Wisconsin‘s Beloit College, Zwerg signed up for an exchange semester at Fisk University. According to an interview in Beloit College Magazine, his interest in attending predominantly black Fisk stemmed from his friendship with his freshman roommate – one of the few black students at Beloit in the late 1950s – and the racist incidents his roommate had experienced at Beloit.
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Media Contact: Princine Lewis, 615-322-NEWS
princine.l.lewis@vanderbilt.edu