Breach of Peace: Voices From the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders

BREACH OF PEACE, is a powerful book consisting of a preface by Roger Wilkins, foreword by Diane McWhorter and a series of portraits and interviews by Eric Etheridge with many of the Mississippi Freedom Riders of 1961.

As McWhorter explains, "The term 'Freedom Rides' eventually encompassed a campaign that lasted more than seven months, involved over four hundred direct participants, and desegregated dozens of bus depots (plus some train stations and airports) from Virginia to Texas. They galvanized every branch of the civil rights movement, binding its past to its future, its tactics to its soul."

The individuals who boarded buses were greeted with racial slurs, open contempt and a deep-seated violence that eventually shocked the nation into demanding Civil Rights legislation be passed.

As McWhorter points out, "Perhaps the ultimate achievement of the Freedom Riders was that, even as the headlines faded in the summer, and without knowing what the results would be, they kept coming, simply because what they were doing had to be done. The resulting moral clarity, combined with the prodigious organizational and fundraising skills honed in its service, completed the Freedom Rides' evolution from what had arguably been a courageous stunt... to the kind of transformative community-building discipline that would sustain the [Civil Rights] movement into its future."

Most of the Freedom Riders were arrested on the charge of breach of peace. What they did was test a federal law that demanded that public transportation vehicles and facilities be integrated. So, in practice they were arrested as they tried to integrate public waiting areas in the Deep South (mostly in Jackson, Mississippi). 

Many of those arrested were transferred to the infamous Parchman penal facility in the countryside, away from the public eye.

Although Etheridge's photos are exceptional, what the former Freedom Riders had to say was equally powerful. 

Pauline Knight-Ofosu

In referring to the training on non-violent civil disobedience, Pauline Knight-Ofosu said, "That was something I remember - you cannot hate, you cannot hold this person in error. You've got to see them for who they are. They don't know it maybe, but they're God's children too... I wasn't afraid. The training that we had gave everybody the conviction that 'You can kill my body, but you can't kill my soul.' That is a very strong and powerful thing."

Jean Thompson reported, "Then someone bailed [out of jail] and reported that I and others had been hit. They brought the FBI in to investigate. They interviewed me. They interviewed the superintendent, and all the other people. And they concluded that nothing had happened. No one had been beaten.

Jean Thompson

Well, I must be hallucinating now 'cause I know I felt that man's [jailer] hand on my face. I know I heard other people being whacked. But nothing happened. That said a lot to me about what actually happens in this country. It was very eye-opening."

Speaking of the danger of he faced, Rev. C.T. Vivian noted, "As long as we allow someone else to speak for us...there's not gonna be a breaking of the old order. We're still going to be killed whenever any policeman decides to. And they are always gonna be covered up if they care to cover it up at all.

Robert Singleton

Who's going to get honest enough to cut through this? This is who we are. We know we can be killed in the process [of demonstrating]. So? We're gonna get killed anyway. But we're not going to do it without being obvious, and we're not going to do it without it being all over the world, and we're not going to do it playing the game of your so-called democracy, which is undemocratic."

And every once in a while, via one of the interviews, a recollection is offered, almost as a tidbit, but it turns into a powerful statement of the time. As Robert Singleton recalled, "A policeman came up on the side and looked in the window [of the paddy wagon] and said to me, 'You're a black son of a bitch, ain't you?' I said to him, 'Isn't that a beautiful color?' And he just froze. He didn't know how to respond to that."

What were the lessons learned from the Freedom Riders of 1961? The power of a non-violent witness in the face of such venomous racism? The power of standing up as a witness to indescribable evil? The simple power of continuing to show up, until the tide turns towards moral justice? Perhaps all of the above.

Meanwhile, as we ponder the significance in the light of history, BREACH OF PEACE serves as a reminder of what our better selves can accomplish.

Click on this link to view Breach of Peace.

NOTE: There is a new edition of BREACH OF PEACE coming out soon. It features additional interviews. For more information and to pre-order click here.

Photo Credits: All photos above were taken during intake process at the Jackson, MS. jail, Police Department of Jackson, MS.