Civil Rights Movement Freedom Riders urge younger activists to get out the vote

ATLANTA -- Charles Person, one of the Civil Rights Movement's original Freedom Riders, echoed organizers across Georgia when he urged a group of Generation Z and millenial activists to encourage young people to vote.

Young leaders from across the country gathered in Atlanta at a conference organized by the New Leaders Council, a nonprofit that encourages civic engagement.

They landed in the swing state at a critical moment, just days after President Joe Biden's campaign withdrawal gave many Democrats hope for victory in November. More than 15,500 volunteers have signed onto ground efforts in Georgia in the week since Vice President Kamala Harris announced her run, her campaign said.

But even among these young activists, there was a palpable feeling of uncertainty about this political moment.

After Person urged the group to organize turnout efforts, Bessie King, a 39-year-old Mexican-American community organizer in Boston, stood up and confessed that even she might not want to vote.

“What I’m facing is people’s disillusionment,” she told him. “Despite the change in candidates, I’m still not convinced they’re representing my values.”

Person said he gets it — watching the news can frustrate anyone — but said voters must look beyond any one issue to the greater good. He urged King and her peers to educate others about how the government works, to understand their struggles, to share ideas, but most of all, to use the resources they have to act, now.

“Don’t give up,” Person said. “You have to believe in you. I believe in you because the future is in your hands.”

Person also appeared alongside Joan Browning, another Freedom Rider now in her 80s, at Emory University, where they are donating their archives. Emory's Rose Library is commemorating the interracial groups of activists who rode buses into the Deep South in 1961, aiming to force the Kennedy administration to enforce a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation unconstitutional in interstate transportation.

The rides were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights group that championed nonviolent direct action. But they were met with violence.

Browning's ride landed her in jail in Albany, Georgia. Person, just 18 at the time, was attacked by the Klu Klux Klan. He's donating to Emory a photograph of a tennis ball-sized lump on the back of his head, which bulged after a KKK member beat him with a pipe on arrival in Birmingham, Alabama.

Person didn’t brag about putting his life on the line for the freedoms many Americans take for granted today. He didn't even tell his wife that he was a Freedom Rider until about 15 years into their marriage, when the couple and their children saw a video of him at an exhibit at the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum.

"The causes that we were fighting, we realized it was bigger than we,” Person said.

Both Person and Browning remain optimistic about the country’s future even as courts chip away at legislation they helped achieve, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Their main source of hope? Young people.

But on the final morning of the conference — days before Harris rallied a packed arena in Atlanta — King said she ate breakfast with five other attendees, all in their late 20’s or early 30’s and struggling to overcome their frustration. They agreed that Person's talk was the highlight of their trip, but they still have questions: How can they have hope when politicians aren’t responding to their needs? What can they do to hold them accountable when they never seem to listen?

“We’re so exhausted of that rhetoric” about hope, King said. “We want answers. We want solutions. We want steps.”

Others at the conference strongly disagreed — and said Person's talk shows that now is not the time to surrender.

“It makes me angry because I see so many people taking their vote for granted,” said Ashley Nealy, 36. “This person is a living reminder of what they had to overcome and why we shouldn’t take the vote for granted.”

Person said he has plenty of his own grievances, but he still votes. And Browning compared it to taking the bus — you won’t reach your destination right away, but you'll get somewhere.

“I have voted for some people who were total scoundrels,” preferring them to the other side of the ticket, Browning said.

Change, she said, is a “long haul.”

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Charlotte Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @ckramon