Freedom Riders

When I despair, I think of Ukrainian fighters down in the trenches, American soldiers mowed down on the beaches of Normandy, and Freedom Riders risking it all on back roads across the South — all fighting for freedom under conditions far more dire than what we face today.

When the first Freedom Ride was derailed by mob violence, a small group of Nashville students trained by Lawson completed the dangerous bus trip from Montgomery, Ala., to Jackson, Miss. Lawson accompanied them and was arrested along with other Freedom Riders in Mississippi after some of the protesters entered the whites-only restrooms at the Jackson terminal.

Arsenault met Lewis in 2000, as he was researching his 2006 book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.”

He impressed them with his sense of purpose and his courage, and he soon moved into leadership roles himself, first in lunch counter sit-ins and then, at barely 21, as one of the Freedom Riders who defied violent attacks to desegregate public transport in the Deep South in 1961.

More serious pieces include homages to departed reporters such as Molly Ivins, Russell Baker and Morley Safer; a retrospective on Trillin’s year covering the Freedom Riders; a profile of Miami Herald cops reporter Edna Buchanan; and an examination of the bizarre time when a mild-mannered film critic for the Dallas Times Herald assumed the persona of a redneck named Joe Bob in order to review trashy slasher movies.