Overview

Arrested as a Freedom Rider in June of 1961, Carol Ruth Silver, a twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate originally from Massachusetts, spent the next forty days in Mississippi jail cells, including the Maximum Security Unit at the infamous Parchman Prison Farm. She chronicled the events and her experiences on hidden scraps of paper which amazingly she was able to smuggle out. These raw written scraps she fashioned into a manuscript, which has waited, unread for more than fifty years. Freedom Rider Diary is that account.Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 to test the US Supreme Court rulings outlawing segregation in interstate bus and terminal facilities. Brutality and arrests inflicted on the Riders called national attention to the disregard for federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation. Police arrested Riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses, but they often allowed white mobs to attack the Riders without arrest or intervention. This book offers a heretofore unavailable detailed diary from a woman Freedom Rider along with an introduction by historian Raymond Arsenault, author of the definitive history of the Freedom Rides. In a personal essay detailing her life before and after the Freedom Rides, Silver explores what led her to join the movement and explains how, galvanized by her actions and those of her compatriots in 1961, she spent her life and career fighting for civil rights. Framing essays and personal and historical photographs make the diary an ideal book for the general public, scholars, and students of the movement that changed America.

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9781496813145

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Carol Ruth Silver s diary is a unique portrait of individual courage a powerful story of idealism and hope, a reflection of a generation of young Americans who would no longer tolerate injustice and segregation. Her raw memories are a poignant reminder of a dark era of the past and of the need to continue our national ride to freedom, progress, and opportunity in our time. Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives (D California)</p>

Author Information

Carol Ruth Silver, San Francisco, California, is a retired lawyer, activist, and former elected official. She currently appears as a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) opposing the U.S. policy of drug prohibition. Since 2002, she has traveled to Afghanistan numerous times to support and promote education, especially of women and girls. As of 2014, she devotes her energy to her pro bono educational projects. Raymond Arsenault is the author of the definitive history of the Freedom Rides, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.

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