The Freedom Riders: 50 years ago

If you want to read about heroism in Americans, here's a very good article:

Remembering the Freedom Rides

In one town, "members of the Ku Klux Klan ... set fire to one bus and beat riders on the other with pipes, chains and bats." At every stop, menacing crowds threatened the nonviolent freedom riders with beatings and worse. Although their idealism hadn't prepared them for the level of near-lethal attacks, they persisted, and eventually, succeeded in creating a better America. The article describes the freedom rides as well as a number of memorials that now stand along the route their buses took 50 years ago.

Martin Luther King (January 15, 1929)

King is a leader widely admired, at least by anyone I would care to have anything to do with. I heard him speak several times, and I remember him with respect and gratitude for his accomplishments.

Many Jews participated in the Civil Rights Movement during the years when King was developing the American version of nonviolent action. Along with King, I remember other heros – Jewish and non-Jewish – such as Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, who disappeared on June 21, 1964, and who, like King, were murdered for their commitment to equal rights.