Buses Are a Comin', page 15
I could not bring myself to address Jim Farmer any way other than with the title Mr., but I could grab him and force him to the floor. I could swear at people who were becoming my friends. I could pour mustard on Genevieve Hughes. That was actually enjoyable until Mr. Farmer told me to quit laughing and smiling. The people doing this to us would not be laughing or smiling, he said with a seriousness my smile said I did not yet have.
Get serious. Get to work.
I did as I was told. We all did, but it was hard to believe our trip would be as dramatic or as serious as what we were practicing.
Mr. Farmer insisted it might. Better to prepare for the worst and be wrong than not practice and be awakened to the world’s realities.
Our training drew to a close. As our formal preparation ended, there was one thing left to do. We should write. That meant compose letters to our loved ones. It meant write out our last wills. That was a shock to me. Why would I need to write out a last will? For a bus ride? I didn’t own anything worth handing down to loved ones. I didn’t have a wife or kids who would need what I didn’t have, and I sure didn’t have any money to bequeath to charity. But beside that, it seemed unnecessary. Was this another signal that I was in over my head? Had I signed on for something the risk of which I could not imagine? It did not seem possible. But others took the directive seriously. At eighteen, I was not old enough to think I might be wrong; just confident and cocksure enough to be certain I wasn’t. I did not write a will.
Writing a will was not a requirement. Providing a next of kin was. CORE needed to be able to contact loved ones if circumstances warranted. My parents did not own a phone. There would be no way to contact anyone at 21 Bradley. It only took a moment to figure it out. I filled in the blank. Next of kin: Lonnie King.
Mr. Farmer took everyone out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I also did not join all the other Riders at dinner that night. I stayed back for a few reasons. I wasn’t then an adventurous eater and didn’t think I could stomach, much less enjoy, anything on the menu. Had I to do it over, though, I might make another decision. Stories of the restaurant that night were delicious enough to leave me with a taste of regret.
We all retired with our own thoughts of what the morning would bring.
For Mr. Farmer, Mr. Peck, Mr. and Mrs. Bergman, and John, it would bring serious, be-aware-of-your-surroundings freedom work.
For Jimmy, it would bring singing.
For Elton, it would bring the next steps in his walk of faith.
For Genevieve, it would bring surprise.
For Hank, it would bring whatever it brought. He’d deal with it as needed, when needed.
For me it would bring optimistic adventure.
It was our last night of known peaceful sleep. Dawn would take us away from the Quakers and move us closer to the quake.
9
First Days
Stand up and rejoice, a great day is here
We are fighting Jim Crow and the victory is near.
Hallelujah, I’m a travelin’, hallelujah, ain’t it fine?
Hallelujah, I’m a-travelin’ down freedom’s main line.
—Freedom song “Freedom’s Main Line”1
Around the breakfast table on Thursday, May 4, my colleagues told me of a “Last Supper” they had joked about having at the restaurant. That sounded more foreboding than funny to me. I preferred enjoying this last breakfast of warm smells and Quaker cooking.
We departed Fellowship House at 8:00 A.M. and headed to our respective bus depots. John, Hank, Genevieve, Al, Ed, and Elton entered the Greyhound station. Mr. Farmer, Jim Peck, Jimmy, Walter, Frances, Joe Perkins, and I got dropped off at Trailways. We entered with feelings ranging from excitement to trepidation. I held that entire range just within me.
The Trailways station was crowded with people going about their day, complete with the emotions a morning at a bus station brings. The wait for the bus. The anticipation of the coming trip. The frustration with late departures. The hidden annoyance at complaining customers. The checking of watches to wonder how it is going. The looking at schedules posted on timetables overhead. Everyone in the station seemed to be living a normal morning with the span of normal feelings. People mostly ignored one another. Passengers went about their own business keeping to themselves, absorbed in their own thoughts, consumed with their own concerns.
Unlike other passengers, we expected to gather at least some notice. Mr. Farmer had contacted multiple press outlets weeks before, informing them of CORE’s initiative, but few showed up at the Greyhound station. None showed up at ours. An interview here, a photo there, was about it, the other team told us later. The next day The Washington Post had a small article on an inside page giving our identities, our hometowns, our purpose, and our itineraries. An accompanying photo showed Mr. Farmer, Genevieve, Hank, Ed, and Elton looking with eager anticipation at a map.2
Mr. Farmer commanded attention at a small press conference he conducted, but Genevieve was the most popular with the press.
“There is a possibility we will not be served at some stops,” she said at a filmed interview. “There is a possibility we might be arrested. This is the only trouble that I anticipate.”3
Mr. Farmer had sent letters to people outside the press he thought should have been interested in what was about to happen—President Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the presidents of Greyhound and Trailways. None paid attention. They were preoccupied by other concerns. The two-week-old fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro was still news. Alan Shepard’s blastoff from Cape Canaveral on Friday, May 5, to become the first American in space riveted the nation’s attention. Our small experiment would not be worthy of importance until our direct-action campaign created a crisis as Mr. Farmer had assured us during orientation. But that was ten days away. On May 4, the political leaders of the country and bigwigs of the bus companies had more important things to do than pay attention to thirteen bus passengers saying they would be testing a Supreme Court decision.
The Black press was different. CORE wanted the Ride documented. Reporters from the Black press were interested in accompanying us on the trip. Simeon Booker, a journalist already legendary in African American circles but probably unknown to White audiences, was on our Trailways team. He had covered the 1955 Emmett Till murder trial for the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Jet and Ebony. Simeon knew how to remain detached from us and unidentifiable as a newsperson. One way was sitting in a back seat with a newspaper fully open, leaving others unaware of any association he had to the Ride. An inconspicuous hole in his newspaper allowed him to keep his reporter’s eye on whatever happened while remaining anonymous. We also had a Black photographer, Ted Gaffney, on our bus. Moses Newson, a Black writer for the Baltimore Afro-American, and Charlotte Devree, a White CORE activist and freelance writer, were on the other team’s bus. If violence broke out, media coverage would be essential in portraying our side of the story. The objective was to have evidence confirming which side perpetrated brutality and which did not if tension moved to violence. Let the American people decide who was right, who was wrong.
At the Trailways station, I was mostly left alone. No one interviewed me, and part of that was by my own intention. I worried that Mom and Dad would face repercussions if my identity got out. The last thing I wanted was a burning cross or worse showing up at 21 Bradley Street. I believed I was prepared to handle anything that came my way, but it would be hard to live with my actions hurting my loved ones. I was the last mentioned in any telling of the Ride, if I was mentioned at all. I think I was seen as a smiling kid having fun. The Riders perceived as deadly serious and deeply concerned—they were the ones the writers and photographers sought.
These side interviews were nothing like the launching of a ship or a public farewell to troops wishing them well in the battles ahead. We wanted some attention, but the deepest part of us wanted normality. We wanted to be US citizens traveling from here to there just like anyone else on our bus. “Here” was Washington, D.C. “There” was New Orleans. We were simply taking more time to get to “there” because we were going to make stops along the way testing facilities, speaking to church groups, and spending nights in homes to make connections and grow a movement.
Our group of seven boarded the Trailways prepared for our first-day assignments. The idea was to have a Black Rider sit in front and an interracial pair sit together in a place of their choosing. One Rider, the “observer,” would play the part of a regular passenger and sit where custom demanded. This was in the hope of guaranteeing at least one of us would not be seen as any kind of “agitator.” Just a normal passenger minding his or her own business. But the observer, if needed, could stay in the town where a Rider was jailed to keep CORE informed. The observer could pay bail if we abandoned our “no-bail” strategy. The observer could appear out of nowhere to stand up on behalf of Riders in extreme circumstances. And an observer could bear witness from an uninvolved distance if necessary. All other Riders dispersed to seats that either challenged or complied with Jim Crow expectations.
Jim Peck and I were the interracial pair for Day One. He followed me in line with Frances Bergman behind him. It was all as normal as could be. I gave the driver my ticket, stepped aboard, and headed to the rear. Passengers paid me no heed. I was where I was supposed to be. But Peck? Jim took his seat next to me, and that captured some notice as he settled in.
The Trailways departed.
Our first day would take us from Washington, D.C., the capital of the country, to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, via Fredericksburg. The ride was comfortable, but, as Mr. Peck and I sat side by side, White next to Black, looks of confusion and curiosity preoccupied a few riders.
No resistance formed, but puzzled, disapproving glances and stares spoke words I heard with my eyes.
“What are those two up to?”
“Why would they be sitting together?”
“What reason could that White man have for sitting in the back of the bus?”
“What is that Negro thinking?”
As a child, I felt my mother’s displeasure across a crowded room when my behavior warranted. At times I knew I was doing something naughty, or I was pushing a boundary, but I pretended I was not. Mom’s eyes focused and drilled and pierced. Her lips tensed. Her head tilted. Her brows narrowed. Her forehead furrowed. And I could tell all this was happening without looking. I avoided looking. But I sensed it. I felt it. The atmosphere would change as if Mom willed it. It thickened. Dampened. Threatened. A storm front moved in. That was the atmosphere in our section of the bus.
“Are we going to tolerate that?”
“Driver, do something!”
“What else are those two going to do?”
“Am I safe?”
Their silence echoed. We ignored it. Or thought we did. But we felt it. At least I did. Jim, somehow, seemed good with it. Calm. Composed. He could sit with his face impassive, his forehead smooth, his posture relaxed. Jim’s eyes ignored cold stares. His manner displayed indifference. He was a passenger sitting on a bus. That was about all there was to it for Jim.
I, on the other hand, could feel my face warming. The upward curl of the edges of my mouth flattened. I expect my forehead, though decades younger than Jim’s, had creases of worry. My smile changed to my childhood discomfort of knowing I was being watched in censure. Surprise mixed with concern. Concern mixed with guilt. I think this was my welcome to the big leagues. My Freedom Ride was on.
Julian’s final words to me in Atlanta, “This will be the last time you ride in the back of the bus,” were not playing out. But my sitting in the back was by design, not societal dictate. A white man was sitting with me, and I with him. By choice. I was in the back, I was a bit uncomfortable, but I was free. It felt rebellious, and it felt great.
Once we cleared the city, we rolled through the countryside of Virginia. Gentle hills and farmland in the foreground, and forested terrain in the distance, zoomed past our window. On the aisle side, passengers walked past us to access the bus’s bathroom. Or stood beside us because a line had formed. Though Mr. Peck and I sat in the back row, we were not at the end of the bus. Our seats were not against the back window, but the bus’s toilet. The parade of people, the sloshing of water in the toilet bowl, the “Excuse me” travelers said to those waiting in line as they squeezed past returning to their seats, the odor, all made our back-row seats undesirable.
Maybe that’s why white society relegated folks such as me to where Mr. Peck and I were that day. Where I was compelled to be every day. Jim Crow said:
“Put ’em where it smells.”
“Put ’em in their place.”
“We’re first. You’re last.”
“That’s the way it is. Live with it.”
In one sense it was interesting being by the toilet. Here was the one room in the Trailways and Greyhound bus system that was not segregated. On the bus, it did not matter at all where Negro and white waste went. It went to the same place. Down the same hole. In the depot, the room where our waste went could not have mattered more.
Jim and I did not talk. We were not portraying traveling companions. We were two passengers of different races who happened to be seated together. He pulled out a book. I gaped out the window. The trip, the scenery, the job we were on, all said to me, “Where would you, Charles Person, rather be than right here, right now?” I wanted to take it all in and feel it. Jim’s response was more “Sittin’ on a bus. So what?” This was nothing new to Jim Peck.
With us being noncommunicative, I began writing in a notebook. My intention was to write throughout the Ride. It seemed worthwhile getting my thoughts down and recording names of folks who stood out to me along the way. I doubted anything would come of my notes, but I thought Mom and Dad would be asking me questions when we stopped in Atlanta, and the notebook might help with details. Especially names. So, I stuck to writing and sightseeing. Jim kept to his book.
* * *
Our first stop was Fredericksburg, about fifty miles south of Washington. We expected to see WHITE ONLY and COLORED ONLY signs because Tom Gaither, who’d inspired Mr. Farmer to create the Ride and who coined our name Freedom Ride, had scouted the entire route ahead of our trip. He took notes of what we would encounter. Those notes warned us Fredericksburg still had segregation signs hanging in the depots. But when we got to Fredericksburg, the signs were gone. Like a restaurant preparing for a health inspector’s visit, Trailways and Greyhound cleaned up their facilities prior to the “inspector’s” arrival.
Just as we were the interracial pair on the bus, Jim and I were the Day One “testers” for the bus depot facilities. That meant it was up to us to use the opposite-race restroom, sit in the opposite-race waiting room, and order food in the opposite-race restaurant. For the white tester, that presumed stations had Negro facilities. Fredericksburg did.
Mr. Peck tested the colored restroom, I tested the white. I even bought a Coke at the white food counter. Nothing happened. Was it going to be this easy the whole way? Or was this experience in the upper South different from what we would face in the Deep South? After all, water boils from the bottom up; the hottest spot is in the deepest part of the pot. At this first stop, the water was not even warm to the touch. Jim told me it had been the same fourteen years earlier. He had integrated the very same restroom on the Journey of Reconciliation. No problem presented itself then either. We took it as a good sign.
When we reboarded the bus, we were not the only passengers integrating the seats. It encouraged us to see black and white customers sitting together in a few other seats. It looked as if Irene Morgan v. Virginia had made a difference on the bus. Would Boynton v. Virginia make a difference in the depots, restaurants, and restrooms?
As we moved out of Fredericksburg, I was proud of myself for what I had done. Here it was, the first day of the Ride, and I was stepping up. I didn’t say anything to Mr. Peck or the others, but it gave me a sense of purpose. It gave me confidence. I could do this. Back then, I probably thought it was all about me showing what I had to offer. Right then. Right there. Now, in my seventies, I think the older members of the team intentionally selected me as a first-day tester to help me experience the water at the top of the pot before the boil of the Deep South. I never thanked them for that. I wish I had.
I think it was that night in Richmond I asked my first-day seatmate, “Why are you doing this, Mr. Peck?” I asked him with a raised emphasis on you. I wanted to express it in a curious tone, not one of bewilderment.
I knew he had been on the Journey of Reconciliation. The only one of us who had. I knew he had been jailed for his pacifism during the war. I knew some of the things he had done in his life, but I did not know why he had done them. That’s what I wanted to know. Why?
His life could hardly have been more different from mine. He hadn’t grown up in the Bottom; he had grown up in the Top. That’s what I was thinking. I was thinking if there is any place called the Top, that’s where Mr. Peck must have been from.
During orientation, I had learned he had been born in Manhattan and was the son of a now-deceased, wealthy businessman who had left him an estate. He had attended a private boarding school in Connecticut, and he had gone to Harvard. If that’s not the Top, it must be close. I did not understand it. This man was already free. If what others had told me of Jim Peck was true, he was a millionaire. A millionaire. He could live with as much comfort as he wanted, and here he was sitting next to me in the back of a Trailways bus on his way to what? If Mr. Farmer was right, the answer was, Jim Peck was on his way to trouble. Why would he do that?
“I think life is made up of Upperdogs and Underdogs, Charles. I got to be an Upperdog. Not by virtue of anything other than who I was born to and the color of my skin.”4
It didn’t take much to figure out that meant I was an Underdog. Before I took offense, he went on, “I didn’t have anything to do with my station in life. Neither did you. But I can stand up for those who will never have what I don’t care to have.”
