The Freedom Writers Diary - Erin Gruwell [67]
After listening to my mom’s account of Rosa Parks’s protest, I thought about the power she had. The power to challenge segregation and to stand up for what she believed was right. Rosa Parks was a true catalyst for change and she was only one person.
Hearing about Rosa Parks and her protest showed me that there is hope for me and all the students in Ms. G’s classes to truly be catalysts for change. Imagine if there were 150 Rosa Parks standing up for tolerance, what a difference we would make.
Diary 75
Dear Diary,
I feel like I finally have a purpose in this class and in life.
That purpose is to make a difference and stand up for a cause.
Ms. G showed us a video during Black History Month, about a group of Civil Rights activists, in the 1960s, who were inspired by Rosa Parks. They decided to challenge segregation in the South. Rather than boycott buses, they took their challenge a step farther. They integrated their bus and traveled from Washington, D.C., through the deep South.
There were seven whites and six blacks on the bus, most of them college students. They were called the Freedom Riders, and their goal was to change segregated interstate travel, along with everyone’s life forever. The Freedom Riders had faith that what they were doing was right, and they wanted the world to know that change was necessary and that being tolerant of each other is good.
I can picture myself on the road with that bus. I can visualize pulling into the bus station in Montgomery, Alabama, to discover the unsettling quietness. Even though they didn’t expect a warm welcome, no one was to be seen at the station, not even the attendants. All of a sudden, Ku Klux Klan members were everywhere. Hundreds of them surrounded the bus, some carried bats or metal poles, and others held vicious German shepherds, growling and ready to attack these unarmed people. The mob was just waiting to get their hands on the riders. The Freedom Riders were barricaded on the bus. The mob, armed and hungry to attack, was just waiting for their first victim to step off that bus.
By choice, the seating arrangement on the bus was integrated: Blacks sat by whites, and vice versa. They were breaking a law that had been established in the South. This was unheard of! Jim Zwerg, a white man, stood up from the back of the bus. He wanted to be the first person to step off, even though he knew at the other side of the door was a mob of bigots drooling for a victim. What was he thinking? He felt this was his chance to fight back, nonviolently, and show his feelings to others. These strong feelings put his life at risk. Jim took that first step off of the bus, and the mob pulled him into their grasp. It was as if he had been swallowed up and disappeared, like bees on honey. Jim was almost beaten to death. He suffered a cracked skull from being hit with an iron pipe, a broken leg, and many cuts and bruises. During the moments the mob was beating on him, the other Freedom Riders got a chance to run for shelter.
I was impressed that Jim made a choice to be on that bus when he didn’t have to. After all, he was white and could sit wherever he wanted and risked everything when he didn’t have to. He wanted to fight for others who didn’t have the same privileges or rights as he did, which made me realize that’s been my role for the last two years. Since I’m white and my parents make a lot of money, I probably could have gotten out of Ms. G’s class if my parents had made a big enough fuss. I’m sure that because of Jim’s choice of riding the bus with black people, a lot of his peers must have thought he was crazy; after all, he didn’t have to, so why get himself into trouble? I guess in my way I’ve been like Jim, and I didn’t even know it. By making the choice to stay in Ms. G’s Class since my freshman year, I’ve forced myself to fit the cause. People gave those riders a chance to get off the bus, and they didn’t, and I’m going to face intolerance head-on as well.
The way I feel about segregation in school is the way Jim must have felt about segregation