Freedom Rider Charles Person will be the featured speaker at the annual Committee To Commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ceremony.
The ceremony, open to the community, is Jan. 18 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Manahan Orthopedic Capital Center, Winona Lake. Doors open at 11 a.m. and a free luncheon will be provided.
Person is an African American civil rights activist who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides. He was born and raised in Atlanta, Ga.
Following his 1960 graduation from David Tobias Howard High School, he attended Morehouse College. Person was the youngest Freedom Rider on the original Congress of Racial Equality Freedom Ride.
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.
The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans May 17.
Boynton outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in interstate bus terminals.
The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating.
During the ceremony, two Academic Excellence Awards wil be presented. Each student will receive $1,000.
People who want to make donations to help with the luncheon can make checks to the Committee To Commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 202 Center St., Warsaw IN 46590.
(Story By The Times Union)
