Freedom Rider carried gun in fear of retaliation

I am writing to clarify and correct a quote attributed to me in last Wednesday’s interview in regard to our recent CNN documentary on the March on Washington.

A brief published reference to IU student body president Tom Atkins’ participation in the Freedom Rides through the South in 1961 ended with this terse sentence: “He carried only a gun.”

This is a misquote. I never said “only.”

Moreover, the account lacked the context I provided your reporter.

Even though the Supreme Court had outlawed segregation on interstate buses by 1961, Jim Crow laws of separation were still rampant in the South.  

That May, two buses of intermingled blacks and whites started through Dixie bound for New Orleans. In Anniston, Ala., the Klan burned one bus and attacked its riders.

When the other bus reached Montgomery, other Klan members beat the riders with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains. Future congressman John Lewis was badly injured.

Others came to Alabama to continue the rides under National Guard protection. Tom Atkins was one of them.

Later, he confided in me that he had carried a gun — presumably for protection.

I was surprised, because that seemed contrary to Tom’s nature. I never quite understood why until I became immersed in segregation-era documentaries for CNN in recent years.

Tom, now deceased, went on to Harvard Law, was elected to the Boston City Council while still a student, lost a white-black race for Congress and served many years as general counsel for the NAACP.

He was among the brightest and best IU alumni I’ve ever known.
            
­— James.Polk@turner.com