This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 24, 2012 - Ann Bliss Malone Hunter first felt the sting of discrimination as an African American growing up in St. Louis when she heard her older brother won the spelling bee but a white child took home the prize.
Hunter doesn’t remember the winning word. But she’ll never forget the story her father told: After the Patrick Henry Elementary student spelled his last word correctly, the judges then gave the word to a white girl, who spelled it the same way. They declared her the winner, and presented her with a new Schwinn bike. He got roller skates -- second prize.
After he threw the skates into the audience, Hunter’s father refused to make his son apologize.
“We were not going to be told, ‘This is what you can expect because you are black,’” Hunter says.
By the time Hunter was a young school teacher, the spelling bee travesty was only one of many prejudicial encounters she’d endured during her 23 years. A lifetime of being ordered to the back of the bus, banned from local tennis courts and prevented from playing in the park fortified her commitment to the Congress of Racial Equality. As CORE’s chair, Hunter was instrumental in planning the Freedom Rides.
She and four other St. Louisans joined hundreds from across the country and Canada making all or part of the Freedom Riders’ Washington D.C.-to-New Orleans journey. Black and white, they traveled from city to city challenging illegal segregation in bus terminal waiting rooms and restaurants.
Their stories come to life in the “Freedom Riders” exhibition opening Wednesday, Dec. 26, at the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse, downtown.
‘It was what I needed to do’
When Hunter got off the bus in Little Rock on June 10, 1961, she and the other passengers proceeded to “whites only” waiting room. They were met by an angry but controlled crowd of white residents and police officers, arrested and thrown in jail for three days.
Behind bars, they ate food sent in by sympathizers, and Hunter taught white, Jewish Freedom Rider Janet Braun-Reinitz, now an activist muralist, how to do the twist. It wasn’t until their next stop -- Shreveport, La. -- that Hunter feared for her safety.
“Thousands of people were there, calling us ‘nigger’ and spitting and trying to hit us,” Hunter remembers. “If they had gotten any more out of control than they were, I’m sure there would have been no containing them.”
Hunter and the others were eventually escorted into waiting cars and driven to safety. Their six-month effort galvanized the burgeoning civil rights movement.
“I didn't feel brave or anything when I went on the Freedom Rides. It was what I needed to do,” says Hunter, who now lives in Chicago.
The “Freedom Riders” exhibit was created by New York City’s Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, in association with the 2011 PBS documentary of the same name. The exhibit centers on a single question, according to the institute’s Susan Saidenberg.
“Would you have gotten on the bus?” Saidenberg asks. “It brings up the issue of whether you would put your life on the line to secure greater rights for all Americans.”
Model for nonviolent demonstration
“Freedom Riders” is a chronological exhibit tracing the path of the more than 400 people of all ages, races, religions and walks of life, many of whom went on to careers in public service.
“There were black students from colleges, there were others from New York, from Kansas and Michigan, there were ministers and lawyers,” Saidenberg says. “Again and again what comes forward is that these were ordinary people.”
Visitors can see photographs and other news coverage, and listen to audio interviews with the original Freedom Riders, looking back on their experiences.
“If you have a smart phone, you can just click on the icon to hear it,” Saidenberg says.
The exhibit also explores the demonstration through the views of the Kennedy administration and the global community. It emphasizes a message of peaceful protest that characterized the civil rights movement.
“This served as a model, that you can bring about change in a nonviolent way,” Saidenberg says.
Watch the entire "Freedom Riders" documentary or view a trailer.
