Freedom Riders join civil rights program at IUN

• Reprints

Former Gary mayor Richard Hatcher, associate professor Jack Bloom and journalist Laura Washington participate in a round table discussion "How the Freedom Rides Changed America" Thursday afternoon at Indiana University Northwest in Gary. The Round table preceded the showing of the documentary Freedom Riders later in the evening. | Jeffrey D. Nicholls~Sun-Times Media

Updated: February 14, 2012 8:05AM

GARY — Diane Judith Nash and Abraham Bassford, two of the 400 black and white Americans who risked their lives in 1961 to fight segregation of interstate travel facilities by traveling together in the deep South, were special guests Thursday at Indiana University Northwest.

The program, part of a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday commemoration, included a roundtable discussion featuring former Gary mayor Richard G. Hatcher; Chicago Sun-Times columnist and ABC-7 political analyst Laura S. Washington; and Jack M. Bloom, associate professor of sociology, history and minority studies at IUN.

It also featured a choral presentation of songs from the Civil Rights Movement by the Ivy Notes of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Gamma Psi Omega Chapter, and the Deltaphonics Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., Gary Alumnae Chapter; a screening of the “Freedom Riders” documentary; and a question-and-answer session.

Nash, a Chicago resident, helped organized the Freedom Riders and was heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement. She was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and launched a successful campaign to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, Tenn.

Bassford was one of the earliest members of the Harlem chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality and he joined the Freedom Riders from New Orleans to Jackson, Miss.

“We would go to the terminals and I, along with other whites, would sit in the section for the blacks, or colored as they were labeled, and the blacks would go to the white section of the terminal,” Bassford said.

Bassford wore a smirk on his face similar to the smirk he worn in his 1961 black-and-white mug shot when he was arrested at a Greyhound bus terminal in Jackson for disturbing the peace.

“Like the biblical story, I spent 40 days and 40 nights in Parchman Penitentiary. I believe that people have to step forward, be loud and speak out against anything wrong done to us,” Bassford shouted in an interview prior to the showing of the award-winning documentary, “Freedom Riders.”

The documentary is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book, “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson directed the documentary and Chicago native/New York resident and award-winning filmmaker and director Laurens Grant produced it. Grant said she was beyond excited when she was asked to produce the documentary.

“Someone with PBS read the book and felt it would make an incredible documentary and installment for their “American Experience” series. It took a lot of research and interviews to bring this documentary to fruition,” Grant said. “I knew about the Freedom Riders but as I researched it was more like a gripping mystery; where did they go, what was going to happen next? I am very proud of this documentary.”

Nash said if not for the journalists who traveled with them and filmed, interviewed and documented everything that happened to them in 1961, the history would not be known today.

“I’ll tell you this much, the journalists who traveled with us risked their lives as well. They were beaten and arrested, too. There were times when it seemed premeditated that people would decide whom to attack first, us or the reporters,” Nash said.

Nash and Bassford said while what they did as Freedom Riders changed American and American history, they wish the desire to step up and do something was just as strong today. “I wish citizens today would stop depending on elected public officials to make changes,” Nash said while shaking her head. “Can you imagine the outcome had we sat back and waited in 1961 for the politicians to do something? We’d still be segregated and in danger!”