Review: Buses Are A Comin’: Memoir of a Freedom Rider by Charles Person with Richard Rooker
There are many unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Charles Person, the author of Buses Are A Comin’, is one of them. Person is one of two original Freedom Riders that are still living today (alongside Hank Thomas). He was the youngest member of this group of activists who rode buses from Washington, D.C. to the Deep South to test whether two Supreme Court cases that outlawed segregation on buses and bus stations were going to be enforced. Person’s memoir is coming out at the just the right time for the 60th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides and at another time of strong civil rights activism.
Person’s book is a memoir covering his early life to his involvement in the Freedom Rides. It begins with his upbringing on Bradley Street in the Bottoms neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. He had his first encounter with the KKK when he was a child. He describes it in vivid detail, it would not be his last run-in with the Klan. His memoir continues through his school days and to the time he was considering colleges. His first choice MIT was too expensive to attend and his second choice Georgia Tech would not admit him because of his skin color. Feeling down, his grandfather picks him back up by telling him to “do something”. Readers will find that this mantra is important later on in Person’s life. He ultimately decides to attend Morehouse College. It was at Morehouse that he meets Lonnie King and Julian Bond who get him involved in the Atlanta Student Movement, where they protested segregated lunch counters and succeed in integrating them.
The rest of the book chronicles Person’s experience on the Freedom Rides. He writes about each member who was involved, White and Black, with particular focus on the White members and their motivations for getting involved. This is especially the case for Jim Peck who was a White millionaire who participated in the Freedom Rides. Person does a good job telling what it was like to participate in this movement. Specifically how the Riders did not face a lot of opposition in the earlier stops, but trouble and violence occurred as soon as they arrived in the Deep South. It would be this violence by racist Whites and Klan members that would end their Freedom Ride early. Person gives a brief summary of the other Freedom Rides that picked up where his group left off, but leaves it to those participants to tell their side of the story.
He ends this memoir by covering his life post-Freedom Ride, his service in the military in Cuba (during the Cuban Missile Crisis) and Vietnam. Both experiences could be books of their own. Person is particularly strong when he discusses the cost of his service in the Civil Rights Movement and the military. As a result he suffered injuries and physical issues that continue to effect him to this day. White members of the Freedom Rides also suffered a cost, their families disinherited them and others either currently live or died in poverty. This was good to mention because sometimes we see activists who end up living a lavish lifestyle, but that is usually just the ones who became famous post-movement. Others who tend to be unsung live normal or dismal lives, never really appreciated for the service they did for our country.
Throughout the book Person explicitly makes connections between his activism and the young activists who are involved in various social movements today. Our modern day activists stand on the shoulders of people like Charles Person and the other lesser known activists of the 1950s and 1960s. This will be a great book for young activists to read, to learn they are not alone, that someone has been in their shoes. Students of history and the Civil Rights Movement will enjoy reading this beautifully written book.
Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, Charles Person, and Richard Rooker for a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. This book will be released on April 27, 2021.
