A Last Will and Testament of a Freedom Rider

When asked the question if she knew she was leading the Freedom Riders to certain death, Diane Nash famously told that every one of them had written their “last will and testament.”

What made them Freedom Riders were not the egregious violence or the hatred and misunderstanding they had to face; what made them the true Freedom Riders was their acceptance of an inevitable death and the confrontation with their own last will and testament. Being truly free from the attachment of their flesh for something spiritual, they had led some 300 others and the future of a generation to become freedom riders of a movement. 

There are many more Freedom Riders from all over the world—many more had given their lives and some did not even have a moment in time to attest to their last wills. 

In 1989, the students on Tiananmen Square simply wanted to mourn the death of Hu Yao Bang, a reformist, who served as Secretary of the Communist Party from 1980 to 1987. Hu advocated rehabilitation of what had happened during the Cultural Revolution. He wanted greater autonomy for Tibet, reconciliation with Japan, and social and economic reforms thought by many Chinese as long overdue since the Cultural Revolution. 

Mysteriously, Hu was forced out of office in January of 1987 and was made to give humiliating public apologies for his allegedly bourgeois ideas. He died later of a “heart attack.” The state media at the time only briefly mentioned his death and the government had not planned any state funeral in accordance to his honored place in the public’s eyes. In reaction, university students and professors from across Beijing marched on Tiananmen Square calling for the reaffirmation of Hu's reputation and further reforms of the state to match Hu’s legacy. The state eventually decided to accord Hu a state funeral, but officials had refused to receive a delegation of student petitioners, who had waited to speak with someone for three days at the Great Hall of the People, who had wanted no less than a reckoning of the basic rights Hu and other reformists had been advocating. 

The students, enraged that the government had refused to receive their petition, and bolstered by the support that had been pouring in from all over Beijing and the rest of China, continued to protest.

Zhao Ziyang, sympathetic to the students, visited them on a bus and begged them to return to their homes. Deng Xiaoping, under false pretenses coming from politically pressure within the party, had been convinced his power base threatened; he decided to denounce the demonstrations in an editorial published in the April 26th People's Daily. I remember that editorial because it came just a few days after my tenth birthday. In his editorial, he called the student protests “Dong-Luan,” a term invoked the ruminant scars from an unforgettable Cultural Revolution. 

Zhao Ziyang resigned a few days later and was reported to have befallen a mysterious illness; he was confined to his home in Zhong Nian Hai, a compound where the Chinese Communist party leaders resided and held their offices in Beijing. 

I remember the tanks rolling in; I remember people’s mood were tense, my parents apprehensive. I remember my parents going to Tiananmen and asking me to stay away from the turbulence. No 10 year-old boy full of imaginations would listen to that sort of warning. 

I remember watching the bus colliding with the tanks. Chaos reigned. I remember fire, violence, blood and ambulances. I remember watching people, students, pulled out of buses, lifeless. A mysterious picture would later define the generation forgotten. But massive violence had effectively stopped a Chinese revolution?

In 2004, following a series of counterintuitive strategic decisions made not by military experts, but by Washington political bureaucrats, the U.S. occupation forces were confronted with Iraqi insurgents with extreme indifference. Suicide bombers and home-made IEDs claimed may innocent lives on the streets, in Mosques, and at schools; but the people most affected were not the professional soldiers—who had written their last will and testament or prepared for battle and ready to meet their “virgins”—but the innocent Iraqi men, women, and children. 

Photo by Michael Yon

When confronted with Iraqi’s reconstruction, the Bush Administration gave the same silence as the Chinese bureaucrats had given to the students. The Washington decisions, according to James Fallows, came to cause much of the same irreversible violence as the Chinese Communist Party’s decisive intervention 15 years ago. Their legacy would taint the U.S. identity in unimagined ways just as Tiananmen had tainted China’s modern reforms. 

I remember coming to a burning car on the streets of Mosul, in front of a line of small stores and houses; bodies laid in pieces: half of a leg not far from entrails, not far from a face burned beyond recognition. These parts I had to put back together, into a body-bag, a daily occurrence; but it was putting children’s bodies into nameless bags that bothered me the most. As a medic, my job was less and less about saving actual lives, but putting more and more dead ones into these nameless bags. Children have neither the capacity nor emotional understanding to write any kind of last wills or testaments. 

The streets then were filled violence; weapons firing always not so distant. There is always a chance some round of AK or an IED would claim lives; everyone I personally knew had made their peace and wrote out their last wills and testaments. Some had asked me to deliver their final words, in the event of their necessity, to more women and children who had nothing to do with all this violence. How would one engage in a conversation with a father who had lost his son? How would you explain it to the dead man’s daughter?

The Iraqi revolution began with liberation, but it seems to have ended yet again in massive violence and confusion. 

In 1958, Boynton boarded a bus in Washington D.C., and headed home to Montgomery, Alabama. Arriving in Richmond, Virginia, he got off the bus to eat. The bus terminal restaurant was segregated at the time; Boynton sat down in the whites-only section. Boynton refused to move after being confronted by the manager and insisted that as an interstate bus passenger, he is protected by federal desegregation laws. He was arrested and charged with misdemeanor trespassing. The Police Justice's Court of Richmond found Boynton guilty of violating Virginia state trespass law and fined him ten dollars. His appeals were confirmed by subsequent state courts; the NAACP assisted in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Thurgood Marshall, joined by the U.S. Justice Department, prepared the case. He pressed the issue Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause while the Justices raised not the constitutional issue, but the issue of "unjust discrimination" in violation of the Interstate Commerce Act. 

The state of Virginia argued the bus terminal restaurant was neither owned nor operated by the bus company; it served the general public as well as bus passengers; and as a private company, it was not subject to federal law restrictions.

The Supreme Court chose to rule on the conflict between the Interstate Commerce Act and the Virginia state law in this case. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 applied to "all vehicles . . . together with all facilities and property operated or controlled by any such carrier or carriers, and used in the transportation of passengers or property in interstate or foreign commerce." Section 216(d) makes it unlawful for any common carrier “commerce to make, give, or cause any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person . . . in any respect whatsoever; or to subject any particular person . . . to any unjust discrimination or any unjust or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage in any respect whatsoever. . . .” Based on this act, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Mitchell v. United States that if a railroad provides dining cars, the passengers must be treated equally by the dining car service. Later in Henderson v. United States the Court further held that service to passengers in railroad dining cars could not be separated according to race.

Justice Black wrote for the Boynton Court and held that bus transportation was sufficiently related to interstate commerce to allow the United States Federal government to regulate it to forbid racial discrimination in the industry. 

The Boynton holding sparked the confrontational Freedom Rides. In response, the policemen of the south had agreed to the Klan’s uninterrupted beatings to use violence against non-violence. Popular support dwindled, courts faltered, politics gave way to the power of violence and influence. 

Violence is often “contagious, furtive, and often blind.” Diane Nash famously said: “if they stop us with violence, the movement is dead.” The movement is never dead; neither is violence.

When violence halts a movement, what can you do? Would any one of us be on a freedom bus in China today? Or in Iraq?

The movement is never dead—temporarily suspended by fear perhaps; perhaps by complaisance or by ignorance; but the movement never stops. Violence will always begin the revolution, but it is in non-violence the revolution must come to fruition. Yet violence seem to have a way of halting any effective revolutions. 

Flanders Field

I’ve worked with a grassroots organization that boasts its glory days from the world war generations. From talking to the few veterans I’ve had the privilege to meet, I learned that when one signs their last will and testament confronting such grave violence, it is always their hope that the ones they love will live in a better place where they would not have to make such writings. The irony goes, however, if their child who had no reason to confront their own freedom and write their own last wills and testaments, they would not understand the price of violence of their forefathers; they would not be willing to pick up the legacy and continue the freedom rides. They would resort to violence and give their children a reason to never repeat their repeated mistakes. But writing a last will and testament does not give one the capacity to “remain non-violent and to forgive.” Those heavy dosed spiritual things do not come from books or schools or military orders, but from experiences of images hard to forget post fact. 

China today actively suppresses any information regarding the Cultural Revolution and what happened on Tiananmen in 1989. Iraq and the U.S. will have to play out their own reconciliations on their own terms. What will happen to the legacy of the Freedom Riders I cannot judge. I am but an observer and an outsider to those direct experiences. 

Diane Nash noted that “massive violence” stops non-violent movements in its tracks; but I doubt “massive violence” has the spiritual power to really stop a movement. What ensue change and resistance to change is but the undercurrent of society; I venture to guess it is our differences that consume us with violence and tidal the waves of our “massive violence.” But change is unavoidable; change comes with the powerful images we are shocked to see and cannot forget. Today, many Chinese lawyers, students, and activists risk their lives to reveal decades of stagnation; the Iraqi is trying to rebuild itself; and the young men and women who had been convinced of their role as liberators in a foreign country now struggle back home in the U.S., the land of free, to liberate themselves. 

Change will happen, violence will ensue no doubt, for many more generations to bear witness. 

Ella Baker compromised after the "massive violence" confronted the Freedom Riders. The leaders of the then Civil Rights movement divided the movement into direct confrontation and indirect legal and political actions. What is left unsaid was the need for journalists to continue the soul searching work they do to bring us the many photos and films to fuel both strategic developments—so we can reflect on what exactly happened. But today our journalism is in a state of denial and uncertainty; while technologies have made recordings and transmitting powerful images more accessible, it has not given us the emotional desires to do so. Today we have a new media focused on consumption, one of the primary contributing factors of many of our problems. In this new information age, we are drowned in a pool of useless neuromancers of “social information”; we do not write wills and testaments but 160 character pundits about absolutely nothing at times. Rich Chinese kids are learning how to dress “ghetto” and “retro” in Beijing from this media, spoiled Iraqi men are learning to make deadly explosives intended for “massive violence.” The real journalists struggle just to make a living let alone convincing others to make their own freedom rides. 

I don’t know who took the picture of the man against a squadron of tanks on Tiananmen; I do know Michael Yon who took Major Bieger’s picture in Mosul holding a child bleeding. There were no freedom buses to celebrate these things; but I like to think there is always hope as long as we are reminded of the things our eyes and hearts would not accept. 

When the time comes, we would have to answer the questions for ourselves: are we willing to write our last will and testament for the things we believe? How would we write such a story? Are we willing to fold those into our pockets and hope they are never seen in the spirit of non-violence? Are we ready to confront the mental prisons of our minds and free our hearts to ride in buses that would burn?

“I won’t be back today because I’m a FREEDOM RIDER.” I am free from this flesh and the world’s suffering of mental slavery; let it do some good for someone who shall inherit this earth in my children’s name.

Not all of us can be true Freedom Riders; not all of us are even given the privilege or opportunity. What we must do is to keep our eyes open and hearts filled with images that should inspire us to leave behind wills and testaments to fulfill unimaginable consequences.

_______________________

Undun (the Roots), track 6 – The Other Side. (Originally called “The Jump”)
Verse 2 (Black Thought)

Yo , we did this in remembrance of

Faces from the past
We no longer have an image of
Carrying cold blood hearts
That never been for love
Brothers keep going for theirs but never get enough
World travelers that seen it all
And did enough
Only to return to learn
The world wasn’t big enough
Damn, how long has it been?
I guess the jig is up
Now all I know is I’m about to wake this nigga up
Yeah that hindsight 20/20 now niggas dead on the money
Trying to take something from me
It’s a wrap like mummy
Undone I am becoming and…
When he’s tired of running
Through the layers of the onion
He’ll probably shed a tear
Cause they’ll be no more fast times
Just his weak mind scrolled out like a bad sign
He never had enough and got confused when they asked why
Life is only a moment in time and it passed by

Track 8 – Lighthouse

Verse 2 (Black Thought)

After the love is lost

Friendship dissolves

And even blood is lost

Where did it begin

The way we did each other wrong

Troubled water neither one of us could swim across

I stopped holding my breath

Now I am better off

There without a trace

And you in my head

All the halted motion of a rebel without a pause

What it do is done till you dead and gone

The grim reaper telling me to swim deeper

Where the people go to lo and behold the soul keeper

I’m not even breaking out in a sweat

Or cold fever but

I’m never paying up on my debt or tolls either

I’ll leave the memories here I won’t need them

If I stop thinking and lie, now that’s freedom

Your body’s part of the Maritime museum

Face down in the past is where I’m being

Track 9 – I Remember
Verse 1 (Black Thought)

I drew a 2 of hearts from a deck of cards
A stock trick from my empty repertoire

Another hopeless story never read at all
I’m better off looking for the end
Where the credits are
It’s a pain living life against the grain
I’m looking back and y’all look the same
Troy, Mark, and little what’s his name
Memory is rerunning it all
It’s the flight of my fall and it’s right on the wall

I remember
Can you remember?
How it was
I do
Remember, do you?

Verse 2 (Black Thought)

I used to ride the train to the same two stops
And look at the graffiti on the rooftops
Like the same song playing on the jukebox
Joint called “Faded Polaroids In A Shoebox”
Regardless to what the cadence is
It can’t be forgotten like old acquaintances
I realize how depressing of a place it is
And when I notice my reflection whose face it is


It’s only human to express the way you really feel
But that same humanity is my Achilles’ heel
A leopard can’t change his spots and never will
So I’m forever ill
Now I can never chill
What’s keeping me from breaking out like Benadryl
When my baptism of fire resulted in a kill
Sometimes it’s as cut and dry as a business deal
You gotta cause the blood of a close friend to spill
But you remember still

What makes the freedom riders Freedom Riders are not the egregious violence or hatred they had to endure; what makes true Freedom Riders is the acceptance their own last will and testament, to be free from death and become truly free from the attachment of the flesh for something spiritual—beyond self.

But those are powerful things that should not be invoked unless necessity calls; for it invokes not only powerful emotions and political wills, but also cuts the thin thread between life and death of individuals.