The Levine Museum of the New South, in partnership with WTVI, will help commemorate the 1961 Freedom Ride, which occurred 50 years ago this month.

On Monday, May 9, a national student group, along with veterans of the 1961 ride, will retrace the route Freedom Riders took a half-century earlier. That means a stop in Charlotte, where one Freedom Rider was jailed.

From Charlotte the re-enactors will travel to Rock Hill, where future U.S. Congressman John Lewis was beaten. The group will be traveling with a PBS “American Experience” television documentary team.

Buses will arrive at the Levine Museum for a 6 p.m. reception followed by a 7 p.m. discussion and film preview. Dr. Mia Bay, a scholar at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park who is completing a book on transportation segregation, will be the featured speaker. Freedom Ride historian Dr. Raymond Arsenault will host the program, which will take place across the street from the museum at historic First United Presbyterian Church, which fed and sheltered protestors during the Civil Rights era.

The next morning, Johnson C. Smith University will host a “Breakfast with the Elders” for the visiting students. The visiting students then head to downtown Rock Hill for a noontime program arranged by the Culture & Heritage Museums of York County.

For more information, visit the PBS website.
 

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