16-02-2025
Freedom Rider shares his story at Black History celebration in Markham
MARKHAM, Ill. – A south suburban city council chamber filled with residents for a Black History celebration featuring one of the Freedom Riders who played a role in dismantling segregation in transit across the country.
Selections from the production '1619 The Journey of a People' brought a large crowd inside Markham's city council chamber on Saturday. 1619 The Journey of a People is a theatrical experience using acting, singing, dancing and spoken word to shine a light on the Black experience in America.
Keynote speaker Miller Gary Green, 81, also captured the crowd's attention as he shared his story as a Freedom Rider in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961.
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'The purpose of the mission was to integrate the State of Mississippi,' Green said. 'The state was segregated. Schools were segregated.'
Freedom Riders were groups of mostly young Black and White students who road buses across the South in 1961, challenging segregation in public interstate spaces like buses and station facilities, including bathrooms and lunch counters.
In spite of the horrific violence they often experienced on their routes, Green felt compelled to participate.
'We had seen Freedom Riders come in every day, beaten, bloody, dogs on them, dogs biting them. We're watching the news every evening at 6 o'clock, but now someone is asking you as a teenager to be a member of that organization and go in a place you had never seen a Black person go in,' Green recalled.
At the age of 18, Green was among a group that tried to buy bus tickets to New Orleans at Trailway Bus Station in Jackson.
'I went in to purchase a ticket and I was told that I had to go around the back, and my question was, 'Why do I have to go to the back?' because my money is the same,' Green said.
He was arrested on July 7, 1961, and was among about 400 Freedom Riders detained during the summer of 1961.
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'From the city jail, we were transferred to the county jail and from the county jail to prison – Parchman, Mississippi,' Green said. 'I was in jail for two months, on death row for 39 days…simply for trying to buy a bus ticket to go to New Orleans? Simply for going into the white interest to purchase a ticket to go to New Orleans.'
On Nov. 1, 1961, a U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission Order ending segregation in interstate travel went into effect. Since then, Green said he's seen lots of progress, but believes much more can be done when the realities of the past are passed down.
'I would like the adults, the teachers, whoever to teach the young people their history. They do not know their history,' Green said. 'You see, if you don't know where you've been, you don't know where you're going. There is enough history out there to motivate any student because we've done wonders, it's just been hidden.'
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