Search results
Oct 10, 1999 · Dr. Walter Bergman, an indefatigable civil rights advocate who was savagely beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1961 as one of the first Freedom Riders and won compensation for the...
Feb 22, 2016 · If one is serious about fighting institutionalized racism and white supremacy, then one must be prepared to take risks. This is exactly what Walter Bergman, a retired teacher had done in May of 1961, when he decided to be part of the first wave of Freedom Riders.
- James L. Farmer Jr.
- James Peck
- Genevieve Hughes
- Joe Perkins
- Walter Bergman
- Frances Bergman
- Albert Bigelow
- Jimmy Mcdonald
- Ed Blankenheim
- Hank Thomas
Raised by a professor who taught divinity at Howard University, James Farmer Jr. was a pacifist who sought to achieve racial justice through nonviolent activism. Often a target of racial violence, Farmer helped to shape the Civil Rights Movement when he launched The Freedom Rides to challenge the efforts to block the desegregation of interstate bus...
James Peck was born into a wealthy family in New York City. He dropped out of Harvard University to become a full-time activist and was the only person to participate in both the Freedom Rides and Journey of Reconciliation. “By encouraging and supporting actions such as that in Montgomery, we who adhere to the principles of nonviolence hope to hast...
One of the three women to participate in the early days of the Freedom Rides, Genevieve Hughes quit her job as a stockbroker to become the field secretary of CORE and civil rights activist. "I figured Southern women should be represented to the South and the nation would realize all Southern people don't think alike," she said of her reason to join...
Joe Perkins was the first Freedom Rider arrested for sitting at a whites-only shoeshine stand in Charlotte, North Carolina, according to PBS. After spending two days in jail, he caught up with the group and led the Freedom Riders on the Greyhound bus, which was burned in Anniston, Alabama. Perkins was recruited by CORE in August 1960 and became kno...
Walter Bergman graduated high school when he was only 15 and was drafted into the Army during World War I. When he saw the devastation in Germany, he became a pacifist. A former union activist and college professor, Bergman became a victim of McCarthyism in 1953 when the state department seized his passport while he was teachingin Denmark. He retir...
A civil rights activist alongside her husband Walter Bergman, Frances Bergman was a school teacher and member of the American Civil Liberties Union and Socialist Party of America. After she and her husband retired from education, they volunteered to ride on the first bus that left Washington on May 4, 1961. At 57, she was the oldest of the female F...
A Boston native, Bigelow studied at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked as an architect before heading off to World War II with the Navy. Then and now:Could the Freedom Riders make a difference against today’s racism? Bigelow was an activist prior to his time as a Freedom Rider. He opposed the use of nuclear ...
McDonald was 29 years old when he joined the Freedom Riders and was considered the least disciplined of the group when it came to adhering to its non-violent mantra. As a teen in the late 1940s, McDonald, according to author Raymond Arsenault, campaigned for a Progressive Party presidential candidate. Later, he became a folk singer in New York City...
Prior to becoming a Freedom Rider, Blankenheim’s experience as a young Marine in North Carolina, where he witnessed segregation and racism, laid the groundwork for his role in the Civil Rights movement. After leaving the military, Blankenheim enrolled in classes at the University of Arizona, where he helped Black students suffering from housing dis...
Thomas, who grew up in Florida, was only 19 years old when he joined the Freedom Riders. He too was one of the riders attacked in Anniston, Alabama, after their bus caught fire. “But I then knew that Anniston was a terrible, terrible place,” he told an interviewer in 2017. Thomas later served in the Vietnam War as a medic in 1965. He was wounded in...
Dr. Walter Bergman, an indefatigable civil rights advocate who was savagely beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1961 as one of the first Freedom Riders and won compensation for the attack from the F.B.I. more than two decades later, died on Sept. 29 in a nursing home in Grand Rapids, Mich., his wife said.
Along with Jim Peck and Walter Bergman, Person was one of the most badly beaten of the Riders during the May 14, 1961 riot at the Birmingham Trailways Bus station.
May 17, 2011 · Dr. Walter Bergman, an indefatigable civil rights advocate who was savagely beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1961 as one of the first Freedom Riders and won compensation for the attack from the F.B.I. more than two decades later, died on Sept. 29 in a nursing home in Grand Rapids, Mich., his wife said.
People also ask
Why did the Freedom Riders stomp on Walter Bergman?
Who was Jim Peck & Walter Bergman?
Who was Walter Bergman in the Freedom Rides?
How did Walter Bergman become a pacifist?
Oct 11, 1999 · Walter Bergman, an indefatigable civil rights advocate who was savagely beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan as one of the first Freedom Riders, died September 29 in a nursing home here, his...
