Nontitled

No Ordinary Mugshots

I’d not come across this particular chapter of desegregation prior to tonight, but the bloody and prolonged Freedom Ride protests that eventually helped rise to the American Civil Rights Movement are a moving and fascinating chapter in Western history. I’m British, so we have our own little piece of history (and we rightly celebrate Black History Month every year as a small, ongoing ‘living history’ element of this) - but America was where it really kicked off. It still amazes me that the ruling factions of a country which considered itself to have ostensibly Western values throughout the Civil Rights conflicts of the Twentieth century would allow these horrendous contradictions of human rights to continue. Happily though, this is all in the past now - but lest we forget what others went through to attain equal rights for all. Now all we have to work on is getting the US to drop the Death Penalty…

Staff at the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office discovered arrest logs and photographs from the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) and the Freedom Rides (1961). Selected pages from those volumes have been scanned by ADAH staff and are available [from the below linked page].