MISSISSIPPI CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM
JACKSON | TENNESSEE
The Freedom Riders Take a walk through the Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi, and you’ll come across one of the movement’s youngest ever Freedom Riders: Hezekiah Watkins.
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WORDS AND PHOTOS BY SIMON URWIN
rrested more than a hundred times, his black-and-white mugshot adorns a wall in one of the museum’s many galleries, and the man himself, now in his early seventies, can be found shaking hand with visitors, sharing stories of his activist past. “I was arrested for the first time aged 13, and I wasn’t even a Freedom Rider back then”, he tells me. “It happened because I was nosey. I wanted to know what a Freedom Rider looked like. I watched them on the news being spat at and attacked by dogs. I thought they must
be superhuman to withstand that kind of treatment and to keep on going, fighting for what was right.” So, one summer’s day in 1961, an inquisitive Watkins went to the Greyhound bus station in Jackson, eager for a glimpse of the Freedom Riders who had arranged a sit-in to protest against segregation on public transport. “My momma had warned me not to go”, he says. “But I went anyway because I found them so inspiring.” Inside, the police quickly approached him. “They asked who I was and where I came from. I gave them my name and told them I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” says Watkins, who had moved to Mississippi aged 10, shortly after the death of his father. The police 122
AMERICAN TRAILS SUMMER | 2021
