True Stories | James "Jim" Zwerg's Life Story

True Stories and Funny Fables

Here are some true stories and fables about the Civil Rights Movement.

Bus Boy

James Zwerg is telling this story in an interview.

One of the stories that went around on the Freedom Rides was.... you have to picturethe bus driver is busy checking his tickets and so forth, heading around, working.... And as he looks up, he realizes that there is this black man sitting right behind him. And this is not a small black man. This is a big, 6-6,260- type black man.

And he turns and says, [in a Southern drawl] 'Hey, boy, you can't sit there. You all get on to the back of the bus where you belong, now. Go on, now.' And a lot of times when you tell it, especially if one of the black kids was telling it, you know, they'd slowly get up out of the seat—the one to tell this is Hank Thomas, 'cause he's about that size—He gets out of his seat and he looks down at the bus driver and he takes him by the scruff of the neck and he lifts him up and looks him right in the eye and says, 'Son, you've already made two mistakes. One, I ain't no boy, and, two, I ain't one of them nonviolent Negroes.' Whoo!"

First Freedom Ride

On 4 May 1961, the freedom riders left Washington, D.C., in two buses and headed to New Orleans. Although they faced resistance and arrests in Virginia, it was not until the riders arrived in Rockhill, South Carolina, that they encountered violence. The beating of Lewis and another rider, coupled with the arrest of one participant for using a whites-only restroom, attracted widespread media coverage.

In the days following the incident, the riders met King and other civil rights leaders in Atlanta for dinner. During this meeting, King whispered prophetically toJet reporter Simeon Booker, who was covering the story, ‘‘You will never make it through Alabama’’. The ride continued to Anniston, Alabama, where, on May 14, riders were met by a violent mob of over 100 people. Before the buses’ arrival, Anniston local authorities had given permission to the Ku Klux Klan to strike against the freedom riders without fear of arrest. As the ﬁrst bus pulled up, the driver yelled outside, ‘‘Well, boys, here they are. I brought you some niggers and nigger-lovers’’.

One of the buses was ﬁrebombed, and its ﬂeeing passengers were forced into the angry white mob. The violence continued at the Birmingham terminal where Eugene ‘‘Bull’’ Connor’s police force offered no protection. Although the violence garnered national media attention, the series of attacks prompted James Farmer of CORE to end the campaign. The riders ﬂew to New Orleans, bringing to an end the ﬁrst Freedom Ride of the 1960s.