Last summer, photojournalist John Partipilo conceived of the idea of documenting the remaining seven Nashville participants of the Freedom Rides, inspired by his friendship with one of those seven, Kwame Leo Lillard. “I’m not sure we’ll ever get another chance.” “All that fell apart because of COVID,” said King Hollands, who helped integrate a Catholic high school in the late 1950s. (Photo by Express/Archive Photos/Getty Images) The military guard a bus en route from Montgomery, Alabama, as civil rights activists known as the Freedom Riders head for Jackson, Mississippi, 26th May 1961. Among the anticipated highlights was a reunion of surviving participants. A 60th anniversary commemoration of the sit-in movement was scheduled last year, but canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tennessee State has awarded honorary doctorate degrees to several students who were kicked out of school because of their participation. Though not well known beyond Nashville but just as impactful in the community were Kwame Lillard, a Nashville sit-in organizer and political stalwart who died in December, and Matthew Walker Jr., a sit-in leader who also participated in the Freedom Rides, who died in 2016.Įfforts to acknowledge their sacrifices have been attempted through the years. Vivian, who studied at American Baptist College and worked alongside the Rev. Lewis, the revered civil rights activist who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and longtime Georgia congressman, died in July.

Now decades after the Nashville sit-ins, the ranks of surviving activists who were on the front lines and the Freedom Rides that followed have thinned considerably. It was part of the historic push to tear down the walls of racial segregation in public accommodations and interstate travel that forced Tennessee and the rest of the nation to change. (Photo by Daily Express/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Civil rights activists known as the Freedom Riders disembark from their bus (marked Dallas), en route from Montgomery, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, as they seek to enforce integration by using ‘white only’ waiting rooms at bus stations, 26th May 1961. Students at HBCUs, including Tennessee State University, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College and ABC, risked their reputations within their families, their educations - in many cases, they were expelled - and their lives. 27, 1960, John Lewis, then a student at American Baptist College, joined other college students in Nashville as they sat down at the “whites only’’ lunch counter at Woolworth’s in the heart of downtown to begin their work integrating the city’s stores.

Freedom riders