Last night I witnessed a burst of historic heroic citizenship in the USA when I watched a PBS special program called The Freedom Riders. In 1961 racism was ugly, mean, unjust, and embedded in American society. Southern states enforced Jim Crow legislation and local police enforced segregated sitting rooms in bus and railroad stations in cities across the South. Young adults, primarily college students trained in non-violence resistance, stepped up to put their lives on the line and to say this practice was wrong. They called themselves Freedom Riders. They filled Greyhound buses headed across the South. Their aim was to travel through major cities and break the existing law by sitting in all white sections of bus stations. White youth joined black youth. One assistant to President Kennedy, who had been sent to a southern city to try to persuade the Freedom Riders to disband met up with polite but immoveable resistance. A young woman calmly but firmly said, “We will continue this effort even in the face of brutal violence because violence can never be allowed to win over non-violence.” At another time, another young black woman in the midst of being beaten with a baseball bat by an angry mob blocked the blows from falling on this same representative from President Kennedy’s office. She said to him, “I’ll take this. I can. I am trained in non violence resistance. You go on now.”
It is the conviction of being called to a profound duty that these Freedom Riders embody that strikes deep in me. Hundreds of young adults in those years heard a call deep within them and stepped up willing to confront injustice until it stopped. They stepped up with resolute assurance in their conviction. President Obama recently described this kind of behavior as, “heroism in peoples’ hearts waiting to be summoned.”
I believe that URI is placed at our time in history to summon forth courage and tough commitments from people all over the world. The expressions and actions may or may not be against hostile mobs and extreme hatreds. For many of us, heroic courage or conviction may take the shape of just getting up each morning with resolute determination to do one’s part to participate in cooperation with others as a citizen. Whether or not our circumstances are extreme – we have heroism in our hearts waiting to be tapped. The Freedom Riders in 1961 showed us what a human being can do. Let us be inspired by these young adults who stirred a nation to a greater level of justice, democracy and consciousness.
