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At 12:30 on the afternoon of May 17, 1968, an unlikely crew of seven men and two women arrived at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Catonsville, Maryland, a tidy suburb of Baltimore. Their appearance at 1010 Frederick Road, however, was only tangentially related to the Knights. The target of their pilgrimage was Selective Service Board 33, housed on the second floor of the K. of C. Hall. The nondescript parcel they
Day 8–May 15: Montgomery, AL, to Jackson, MS
We left Montgomery early in the morning, bound for Selma on Route 80, just as the Freedom Riders did on May 24, 1961. Fortunately, we didn’t have (or need) the protective ring of National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets, FBI agents, police cars, and military helicopters–“the apparatus of protection,” to use Jim Lawson’s words. We passed by
By John Lockwood and Charles Lockwood
The Washington of April 1861—also commonly known as “Washington City”—was a compact town. Due to the cost of draining marshy land and the lack of reliable omnibus service, development was focused around Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and White House. When the equestrian statue of George Washington was dedicated at
Day 5–May 12: Anniston, AL, to Nashville, TN
Our fifth day on the road started with the dedication of two murals in Anniston, at the old Greyhound and Trailways stations. I worked with the local committee on the text, and I was pleased with the results. In the past, there was nothing to signify that anything historic had happened at these sites. The turnout of both blacks and whites was
Day 4–May 11: Augusta, GA, to Anniston, AL
As we left Augusta, I gave a brief lecture on Augusta’s cultural, political, and racial history–emphasizing several of the region’s most colorful and infamous characters, notably Tom Watson and J. B. Stoner. Then we settled in for the long bus ride from Augusta to Atlanta, a journey that the students soon turned into a musical and creative extravaganza featuring new renditions of freedom songs, original rap songs, a poetry slam–all dedicated to the original Freedom Riders. These kids are quite remarkable.
Day 3–May 10: Charlotte, NC, to Augusta, GA
The next stop, a few blocks away, was West Charlotte High School, an important site in the school desegregation saga in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Since our freedom bus was temporarily out of commission (the AC was being fixed), we drove up in a red, doubled-decker, London-style “party bus.” Some of the kids rushed out to greet us, perplexing the school security guards, who
Raymond Arsenault was just 19 years old when he started researching the 1961 Freedom Rides. He became so interested in the topic, he dedicated 10 years of his life to telling the stories of the Riders—brave men and women who fought for equality. Arsenault’s book, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, is tied to the much-anticipated PBS/American Experience documentary “Freedom Riders,” which premiers on May 16th.
By Adam Phillips
The American South was a segregated society 50 years ago. In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in restaurants and bus terminals serving interstate travel, but African-Americans who tried to sit in the “whites only” section risked injury or even death at the hands of white mobs. In May of 1961, groups of black and white civil rights activists set out together to change all that.
By Louis René Beres
Osama bin Laden was assassinated by U.S. special forces on May 1, 2011. Although media emphasis thus far has been focused almost entirely on the pertinent operational and political issues surrounding this “high value” killing, there are also important jurisprudential aspects to the case. These aspects require similar attention. Whether or not killing Osama was a genuinely purposeful assassination from a strategic perspective, a question that will be debated for years to come, we should now also inquire: Was it legal?
Osama bin Laden was reported to have been killed by US forces late Sunday night EDT at a compound in Abbottabad, just outside Islamabad. This will be a tremendous morale boost for the US, and it would be a crushing blow to Al Qaeda’s. Sure, bin Laden is just a figurehead of an organization which has now sprouted branches all over the world, and sure his death will likely provoke retaliatory attacks by his followers seeking to revenge his “martyrdom,” but there is little doubt that this development is a net gain for the US.
Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, wrote in the biography Osama bin Laden that Mr. bin Laden’s “has anticipated a war of attrition, one that might last decades” and “has given no indication that he expects to live long enough to finish the job.” Mr. Scheuer believes that younger al-Qaeda activists have already been well groomed for the future.
Here we present an exclusive excerpt from Osama bin Laden that considers the threat
By Karen Greenberg
The most amazing fact about the more than 700 previously unseen classified Guantánamo documents released by WikiLeaks and several unaffiliated news organizations the night of Sunday, April 24, is how little in them is new. The information in these documents — admittedly not classified “top secret” but merely “secret” — spells out details that buttress what we already knew, which is this: From day one at Guantánamo, the U.S. national security apparatus has known very little about
How real is the HBO series Treme? Here John Swenson reflects on what it was like watching the first season as a resident of New Orleans (he has yet to comment on the second, which premiered last night), as well as what the culture of the city means to its people. As a writer for OffBeat Swenson has written about the musicians returning to NOLA after Katrina, and in his forthcoming book New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans he talks about their crusade to save the endangered city. Swenson himself suggested the song in the video,”Dogs Chase Cats,” from Andy J. Forest’s NOtown Story (2010).
By Mark C. Carnes
General Editor, ANB
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War will be commemorated in the usual ways. But a truly unique approach is provided by the online—and thus searchable—version of the American National Biography, a 27-million word collection of biographical essays on some 18,731 deceased Americans who played a significant role in the nation’s past.
By Ervin Staub
In difficult times like today, people need a vision or ideology that gives them hope for the future. Unfortunately, groups often adopt destructive visions, which identify other groups as enemies who supposedly stand in the way of creating a better future. A constructive, shared vision, which joins groups, reduces the chance of hostility and violence in a society.
A serious failure of the Obama administration has been not to offer, and help people embrace, such a vision. Policies by themselves, such as health care and limited regulation of
By John A. Neuenschwander
In a recent posting on Oral History listserv a submitter indicated that she was about to begin an oral history project with undocumented workers and wished to put some safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized access. To protect the identities of the narrators several respondents suggested that pseudonyms should be created for each interviewee. One of these respondents recommended that the document containing the pseudonym/real identity matchup be transmitted for safekeeping to a location abroad. Another responder indicated that in addition to the use of pseudonyms the transcripts of the interviews should be stripped of all identifying information and the recordings