Freedom Fighters

 At segregated lunch counters from Greensboro to Nashville, young college students face arrest to bring the injustices of segregation to light. And a small group of blacks and whites from the north calling themselves the Freedom Riders brave mob violence in their attempt to expose segregation in bus stations across the South.

I feel guilty for not knowing more about these brave people.  These people that risked their lives to take a stand for what was rightfully theirs.  Freedom.  Yes, this happened before I was born, although not too much before that.  But I still should know more about the people who fought for their right to be equal to everyone else.  Their right to sit in the front of a bus.  Their right to drink out of one drinking fountain.  Their right to enter through the same door as white people.

The actual accounts of those days were eye opening.  The cruelty they endured and yet they had such strength.

I set it up on my computer so I could read the transcript at the same time as watch the actual footage from the special on PBS.  It was moving, riveting, sad, and so many other things, all at the same time.  I will never know what it felt like to be in their shoes, and I hope I never have to.