60 years after the Freedom Riders bus burning, how far have we come?

May 8—In the spring of 1962, less than a year after Anniston greeted twin busloads of civil rights activists with fists and firebombs, Sandra Sudduth landed in an Alabama jail. She was 19.

Her father, she says, had always taught her to oppose injustice, to stand up for what's right, hoping America's marriage to segregation would organically dissolve. But egalitarian gains proved glacial.

When her race prevented her from attending all-white Jacksonville State University, she enrolled at Talladega College. When students took their crusade from the campus to the city's downtown, she eagerly participated.

She marched. She attended a sit-in at a Talladega drug store lunch counter, where the activists were denied service. When arrested outside the drug store, Sudduth was charged with "conspiracy to disrupt and interfere with private business" and spent a week in the Talladega City Jail, where she and her classmates studied for their final exams.

"That is still on my record," said Sudduth, a retired educator and former Jacksonville City Council member whose late father, Theodore Fox, was that city's first Black councilor. "I still have the paper." She chuckles, albeit slightly, when recounting how a routine background check flagged it during her lengthy political career.

"I can remember being a student and having Martin Luther King and different ones coming to our college to talk to us about how to be non-violent (in our protests)," she said. "We were shown that; we were shown how to do certain things."

Today, Sudduth and the few remaining Freedom Riders who challenged the segregation of interstate travel in 1961 are among the civil rights movement veterans who can address a question that's perhaps unanswerable: How far has America's quest for racial equality come in the 60 years since violence stained Anniston's global reputation?

"Basically, I think we have come light years, but there are several areas we need to point out," said Atlanta's Charles Person, a Freedom Rider who survived a bloody beating on a Trailways bus when it passed through Anniston. "Hopefully we can bring that to light in some way or some form."

The racial disparities in America

The 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides arrives at a tumultuous time in America's civil rights journey. The videoed death of George Floyd in 2020 and the subsequent murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin this spring have reignited national conversations about race and equality, particularly in regards to the policing of minority communities.

As teenage activists, though, Person and Sudduth may have struggled to envision the gains America has pushed through, particularly in national politics.

In the last two decades, the United States has elected its first Black president, Barack Obama, and its first Black (and first female) vice president, Kamala Harris. Fourteen members of the Biden administration's Cabinet are either Black, Hispanic, Asian American or Native American. Notable is Lloyd Austin, a former U.S. Army four-star general from Mobile who is the first African American to serve as secretary of defense.

The demographics of Alabama's state government, though, do not match the state's population. Twenty-seven percent of Alabamians are Black, according to the Census Bureau, but only 9.1 percent — two of 22 members — of Gov. Kay Ivey's Cabinet are Black: Fitzgerald Washington, secretary of the state Department of Labor, and Nichelle Williams Nix, head of the Governor's Office of Minority Affairs.

But those headlines belie the realities that activists often recite: a lack of public investments in minority communities; harsh sentencing guidelines that overwhelmingly affect African Americans, particularly Black males; Republican Party-led voting reforms that disproportionately hamper minority districts; and what they believe are a mountain of examples of excessive police force against Blacks. The elimination of systemic racism in America, they believe, is unfinished work.

That's why they say the need is great for Black Lives Matter, the global social movement whose origins date back to the 2013 killing of teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida.

"Of course, we've had progress, but we still have a long way to go," said Seyram Selase, a former Anniston City Council member. "Meaning that, as an African American male you can still walk out of your home today and have legitimate fear for your life."

Selase, who is Black, mentions others whose recent deaths have become national events. Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man killed by white men while jogging in Georgia. Breonna Taylor, a Black woman in Louisville killed in her apartment by white police officers. He brings up Floyd. He doesn't mention Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark or Daunte Wright — Black Americans whose deaths during police encounters have fueled recent protests.

"I think there is still a lot of fear that goes on in our communities that now, thank God for smartphones, is being exposed to America in a faster fashion," Selase said.

"I hope that we as a local community, a state and a country, that we are not becoming desensitized, because it seems to be happening more frequently."

Acclaimed journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing in 2015 in The Atlantic against the notion of a "post-racial America," posited that "we should seek not a world where the black race and the white race live in harmony, but a world in which the terms black and white have no real political meaning."

Dr. King's influence today

Person, 78, is optimistic. He gushes over today's Anniston — a city he views as wholly different than the one in which he was beaten on Mother's Day 1961. He recently published a book on his Freedom Riders experience, "Buses are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider." But he has no illusions, he says, about the nation's unfinished tasks.

It is there, when he discusses the future, that Person returns to his sphere of influence, a direct line between his generation's activism and King's teachings.

King's message about the humanity of a living wage resonates with Person, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant. The disparity is real, given that the median household income of white Americans is $65,902, according to 2018 census data. Black households' median income is much lower, $41,511.

King would be saddened by the proliferation of homelessness in America, Person said, and the exponential rise in student debt that is hampering young Americans of all races. "It makes no sense," he said, "but you can be a blue-chip athlete and you can get a free ride," while other students increasingly face long-term indebtedness.

Though a youthful 37, Selase mimics Person's adherence to King's teachings. "Right before Dr. King was assassinated," he said, "his main primary thing he was working on was the Poor People's Campaign. He really really started to zero in on the economics of a community. Everybody knew and realized that is the thing that has held many communities back forever."

Anniston's historic West 15th Street neighborhood, Selase says, exemplifies what once was possible for Black communities. "The dollar in that community was revolving around there for longer than a week or two," he said. But the city's traditional center of Black commerce withered when shoppers and merchants alike took their money elsewhere after the roots of integration firmed.

What allowed for West 15th Street's vibrance — among other things, the refusal of white merchants to equally serve Black customers — fell apart when Blacks were allowed to shop, work and open businesses wherever they preferred. Selase, who represented one of Anniston's lower-income wards, has a vision for how the city should measure racially equitable success.

"What success would look like in 50 years is many of these communities not only having equal access and opportunities to good, high-skilled, paying jobs but also where the communities become self-sustaining, in effect," he said. A modern version of the mid-century West 15th Street, in other words.

It boils down, Selase believes, to "being on the same playing field economically as others."

Critics of America's racial discussions

It's laughable, Sudduth says, that large swaths of Americans contend systemic racism doesn't exist. Person's military training requires an apolitical stance; he doesn't budge. But that's not the case for those who see the Trump administration's fingerprints imprinted on the rise of racial tensions.

Selase's voice deepens when he goes there.

"I think the election of President Trump (in 2016) was a direct backlash to President Obama getting in office and actually doing a good job," he said. "I think President Trump and his administration knew that this psychology was out there and they just played to it.

"Take it outside of the African American community. Look at what has happened to immigrants, look at what has happened to the Asian American community ... I think President Trump and his policies and his administration tried to dismantle a lot of the good will and good faith of people working together and trying to do what's best for all people in America."

During the Vietnam War, Person remembered, "we all got along, even though there were Southerners and Northerners, and there were white guys who had their Confederate battle emblems — but we still got along." He embraces the notion of America as the quintessential melting pot of immigrants who "should be open and receptive to others and their ideas, as well. That's what makes us better."

Critics — even well-placed ones — nonetheless exist. Last month, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., "denied ... that there is systemic racism in the U.S.," CNN reported, and he's hardly alone. After the Chauvin trial verdict, Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves told Fox News last month that "there is not systemic racism in America." U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. — the only African American GOP member in the Senate — echoed those sentiments in his rebuttal to President Biden's congressional speech last week.

Sudduth considers what she might say to someone who challenged her on racism in today's America.

"I would say, 'I don't think you know what racism is,'" she said. "'I think you are so caught up on being a privileged person that you have no idea, you have not gone through any of the ups and downs we have gone through.

"'To me, being privileged a lot of times blinds people to facts. So don't try to tell me what I've been through and the things I have encountered, because you have been privileged all this time not to have encountered that.'"

Sixty years ago, Person's teenaged decision to join the Freedom Riders placed him at the center of a non-violent movement that couldn't avoid bloodshed. He wholeheartedly believes that six decades of progress are evident, that they're not a social equivalent to fool's gold.

He just wants more.

"I think with what has happened in the last year, even in spite of the pandemic and the racial violence, I think it's optimistic that we know there are (good) people in this world, but they have to step up," he said. "They have to get on their bus and try to make change.

"We can make a difference, and it's encouraging for the young and old, that if you see something wrong, you need to do something about it. It's easy to sit and complain, and we all do that, but my grandfather said, 'Are you going to sit there and complain, or are you going to do something about it?'"

Phillip Tutor — [email protected] — is a Star columnist. Follow him at Twitter.com/PTutor_Star.

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