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KORVA COLEMAN: Reported by your local Minnesota Toyota dealer, with Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive. Available in multiple Toyota vehicles. Toyota, moving forward.

And programming is supported by the Fitzgerald Theater, inviting you to sign up for our online events newsletter, the Gatsby. You'll receive advance information on all their concerts and literary programs. You can learn more by going to fitzgeraldtheater.org.

GARY EICHTEN: You're tuned to 91.1 KNOW FM, Minneapolis and St. Paul. We have a sunny sky, and it's 72 degrees. The forecast calls for sunny sky-- sunny to partly sunny conditions through the afternoon with a high 75 to 80 degrees. So it will warm up a little bit. Then tonight, clear skies are forecast with a low of 55 to 60. Tomorrow, a 20% chance for some rain, with a high of 85. So it warms up again. And then on Thursday, some more rain is likely with a high temperature of 80. 75 to 80 today.

KORVA COLEMAN: From MPR News in Washington, I'm Korva Coleman. President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are talking about their support for embattled Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert says he would like to meet with the Palestinian leader. Mr. Bush says he hopes Abbas will bring a new political stability to the Palestinians.

GEORGE BUSH: Our hope is that President Abbas and the Prime Minister Fayyad, who's a good fellow, will be strengthened to the point where they can lead the Palestinians in a different direction.

KORVA COLEMAN: Both the president and the prime minister condemned the Palestinian Hamas organization, blaming it for vicious murders and cruelty. A car bomb ripped through the center of Iraq's capital today, killing at least 78 people and wounding more than 100. The explosion comes after five days of relative calm in Baghdad during a state imposed curfew. MPR's Rachel Martin reports from Baghdad.

RACHEL MARTIN: The explosion went off near a Shiite mosque in Halani Square, right in the middle of Downtown Baghdad. It's an area filled with markets, small businesses, and auto repair shops. The car bomb is the first major attack in the city since a state imposed curfew was lifted on Sunday. The curfew went into place last week after insurgents bombed the minarets of the Shiite shrine in Samarra.

The blast comes after US forces launched a major offensive in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad. The offensive, dubbed Operation Arrowhead Ripper, is focused in Baquba, the capital city of Diyala. It involves more than 10,000 US troops and is meant to target Al-Qaeda strongholds. US officials say more than 20 insurgents have been killed in the raids. Rachel Martin, MPR News, Baghdad.

KORVA COLEMAN: South Carolina fire officials are calling last night's fire in a furniture warehouse in Charleston the deadliest for firefighters in the state's history. No one is sure yet what started the inferno. From member station WHQR, Catherine Welch has more.

CATHERINE WELCH: The fire tore through the sofa superstore and warehouse last night, killing nine firefighters. Jim Bowie is executive director of the South Carolina Firefighters Association and used to be a member of the Charleston Fire Department. He says teams from across the state are mobilizing to help the Charleston Fire Department and families of the dead.

JIM BOWIE: I think right now, what these firefighters need and their families need at this point is just everyone's thoughts and prayers.

CATHERINE WELCH: South Carolina's governor has ordered the flags be flown at half staff. For MPR News, I'm Catherine Welch in Wilmington, North Carolina.

KORVA COLEMAN: White House budget director Rob Portman is leaving. He says he's departing for personal reasons. He's long been commuting home to his family in Cincinnati. Portman, a former trade representative and congressman, will be replaced by former Iowa congressman Jim Nusselt. On Wall Street, the DOW was up 20 points at 13,633. The NASDAQ is up a fraction. It's at 2627.

You're listening to MPR News from Washington.

SPEAKER 1: Support for MPR comes from [? sitforless.com. ?] Direct seller of the Herman Miller Aeron Chair. All Aeron colors and configurations available on the web at sitforless.com.

STEPHEN JOHN: From Minnesota Public Radio news, I'm Stephen John. No injuries are reported after a mercury spill forced the evacuation at three buildings at Minnesota State University Moorhead. A university spokesman says the mercury spilled from a cart being wheeled by a custodian this morning. Bridges Hall and two other buildings that share the same ventilation system were evacuated as a precaution.

A rally is scheduled to get underway this hour on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol to show support for Former General Vang Pao and 10 others accused of trying to overthrow the communist government of Laos. The rally is being organized by a coalition of Area Hmong organizations. South Dakota is one of five states to join a new education initiative designed to better prepare students to enter the workforce. Governor Mike Rounds says pushing kids in the core subjects is not enough. Minnesota Public Radio's Cara Hetland reports.

CARA HETLAND: South Dakota joins West Virginia, North Carolina, Maine, and Wisconsin in what's called the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. It's a national movement that promotes teaching and learning new skills. Governor Mike Rounds says businesses demand a different kind of worker and schools need to change so students are prepared to enter the workforce.

MIKE ROUNDS: 21st century skills include things like critical thinking, problem solving, communication, leadership, and technology literacy.

CARA HETLAND: Rounds, who's a Republican, formed an advisory committee made up of businesses to help design programs and projects for K-12 and higher education students. Reporting from Sioux Falls, Cara Hetland. Minnesota Public Radio News.

STEPHEN JOHN: Minnesota forecast partly to mostly sunny statewide this afternoon. Highs in the low to middle 70s. There could be some showers popping up in the North tonight. Twin Cities, mostly sunny. 73 right now. This is Minnesota Public Radio News.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks, Stephen. Six minutes past 12.

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And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Gary Eichten. 46 years ago, in June of 1961, seven white Minnesotans played a role in writing the history of the Civil Rights movement. Those seven folks joined more than 400 Freedom Riders, Blacks and whites, men and women. People who were arrested, some of them beaten badly, testing a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated interstate transportation. In other words, outlawing segregated waiting rooms, restrooms, and lunch counters for Blacks and whites at bus terminals and the like.

Freedom Riders rode buses through the Deep South as part of a campaign to force states to comply with that ruling. In this hour, we're going to hear from two of the White Minnesota Freedom Riders. Marv Davidoff, who, of course, for decades has been an activist involved in all kinds of causes. And Claire O'Connor, one of the few white women who joined the Freedom Riders. Here's Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson with the latest installment in our Voices of Minnesota interview series.

DAN OLSON: Attend nearly any rally or protest in Minnesota, and there's a chance you'll see Marv Davidoff. For decades, Davidoff, who describes himself as a nonviolent revolutionary, has added his voice and presence to countless causes. Davidoff, who is 75, moved to Minnesota to attend Macalester College after finishing high school in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan.

It was the early 1950s. The United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War. Fear of communism was rampant. The mood toward anyone questioning authority or US policy was ugly. I talked to Marv Davidoff early one morning at a South Minneapolis dialysis clinic. Both of Davidoff's kidneys have failed. Several times a week, he goes to the clinic where he's hooked up to whirring and beeping machines that clean his blood.

Davidoff said he became an activist because of what happened to him when he entered the US Army.

MARV DAVIDOFF: I got drafted out of my senior year at Macalester. Korean War had ended that week, luckily. And in basic training at Fort Riley, Kansas, our sergeant got our platoon off to the side one summer day. And he said, we're sending a guy named Anderson into your platoon. He jumped the boat and missed fighting the gooks in Korea. Said, I want you to beat the hell out of 'em tonight. And I can assure you, nothing will happen to you.

So guys gathered on the top floor of the barracks and said, let's go down and beat 'em up. And I was the only one in the outfit to say, I don't think we should do this. Let's go and talk with them. Maybe had a good reason. And he's not going to be in a training outfit very long. He's come out of a stockade. They didn't throw him out. He's already been punished for whatever he did. It's ridiculous.

Now we have to go beat 'em up. So then I said to them, do you remember when the whole training division was in the post theater and the general in charge of us said to us, we're going to make you train killers who will obey every order without thinking? I remember saying to myself, not me. So I don't think we should do this. And they went and did it anyway. And I stayed upstairs.

People, friends reported. They put a blanket on Anderson's head, shoved him down a gauntlet. Those who wished kicked him and punched him. And then they took the GI brushes used to scrape the floor clean for Saturday morning inspection, made his skin bloody rock. Blanket on his head. He didn't know who was doing it to him. He never saw them. And then they ran away.

Friend of mine told me what had happened. And I couldn't sleep that night. In the morning, we all got up very early. I looked at the guys on my floor, and I said, you're a bunch of stupid cowards. Don't you know what you've done to yourselves? By doing that to him-- I am, too. I should have been down there helping him out. Then I turned around to fix my bunk, and I got the blanket party. Blanket over my head. Two guys holding me, and one punching me in the face.

And when it was over, I went to the orderly room and told the sergeant what had happened, what he had set up. And he said, we think you're a commie. And I said, I've never met one. Could you introduce me to one? And I'm on your case from now on. So I went down to the clinic to see if they had hurt me. They really had just bruised me.

Then I went to see the Jewish chaplain. An army captain told them the story. And he says to me, Marv, why are you rocking the boat? And I said, rabbi, what the hell is wrong with you? And he said, I can get you transferred. And I said, I don't want to be transferred. From then on, every time I went into a class that an officer was giving, if I heard something I'd disagree with, I'd stand up and say, that's a lie. They do not like that. So I got the treatment.

The army radicalized the hell out of me. And I got angry, and I didn't care what they did to me. I was not going to stop even though I was alone.

DAN OLSON: Marv Davidoff. This is Voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson. Davidoff says he was walking across the University of Minnesota Minneapolis campus one day in 1961 when he saw a friend on his way to a meeting organizing civil rights protests. Davidoff joined him and ended up becoming one of seven white Freedom Riders from Minnesota.

The president at the time was John F. Kennedy. His brother, Bobby Kennedy, was the attorney general. The Kennedys were focused on the Cold War with the Soviet Union. They were reluctant to focus on the increasingly violent civil rights confrontations until those confrontations made international headlines. Here's more of my conversation with Marv Davidoff.

Who were the Freedom Riders? What did you do?

MARV DAVIDOFF: Well, in May of 1961, Congress Of Racial Equality, CORE, SCLC, Dr. King's group, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, sponsored the Freedom Rides to test whether terminal facilities from DC to New Orleans had been desegregated, as they should have been, after Interstate Commerce Commission rulings, which had the effect of law.

And savage violence in Anniston, Alabama, at Birmingham and Montgomery. And Dr. King called the rides off. Young Black people from SNCC went to Montgomery and argued with them and say, you can't stop them now before going into the worst state, Mississippi. And if we stop, we lose. And convinced them, and the rides went on.

The Kennedys, who were trying to stop the Freedom Rides, then were forced to federalize Mississippi National Guard to escort the buses into Jackson. And when the call went out and we joined, it was June of '61. About 100 people were in jail. Black and white, men and women, old and young, in jail in Jackson, Mississippi.

DAN OLSON: What was your scariest or most profound moment as a Freedom Rider?

MARV DAVIDOFF: We saw on television the savage beatings that everybody on the first couple of buses got. And that's fearful. But by the time we went, it didn't look as though that might happen. Although you never knew. And six of us from Minnesota, an all white group, went to Nashville first for an orientation, which current Congressman John Lewis and another famous person, young Diane Nash, gave for us.

And they said, there any Negro people to go with you tonight? We'd like to send you tonight. And there are rumors everybody's going to be taken to Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. And we don't know how people will be treated. So we're going to leave you alone for a couple of hours. If you decide not to go on and to return to Minnesota, no guilt, no shame.

Took us 15 minutes. And we said, what the hell have we come this far for? We're going all the way. And then Diane and John came back. We sang freedom songs. And they said, we're taking you one at a time to the Nashville terminal. The young whites looking to beat up Freedom Riders here. Sit apart from each other, don't talk to each other. And a SNCC contact person will meet you in Memphis. Then make sure you get on the right bus to Jackson.

DAN OLSON: Marv Davidoff. This is Voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson. There's a new account of the 1961 Freedom Rides. It's written by historian Raymond Arsenault. Arsenault says civil rights groups recruited additional Freedom Riders, including whites, in order to get more attention and to choke the Southern states' courtrooms and jails with protesters.

Here's more of the conversation with Minnesota Freedom Rider Marv Davidoff. We talked at the Minneapolis Dialysis Clinic, where he's hooked up to whirring and beeping machines cleaning his blood. Davidoff recalled the overnight bus ride to Jackson, Mississippi, where he was to be arrested.

MARV DAVIDOFF: I didn't sleep much. Overnight to Memphis thinking about all of it. And when we were on the Greyhound leaving Memphis, you go by Graceland and we're thinking about Elvis. And then there was a great big billboard at the Mississippi-Tennessee border showing white people only fishing water, skiing, and swimming. And it said, Welcome to Mississippi, June is Hospitality Month. And we all thought, not for us.

And as soon as the bus crossed onto Mississippi proper, state highway patrol headed into Jackson, blaring the siren every time we went through a town, letting people know they're Freedom Riders on board. And when we pulled into Jackson, ordinary terminal scene. We were told to walk into the Negro waiting room since we were an all white group.

The waitresses didn't even offer the service. They seen this again and again. And then Captain Ray of the Jackson Police Department came in and arrested us on breach of the peace. We were interrogated and fingerprinted, booked in. And met our Black lawyer, Jack Young. And he said, you're going to be tried in an hour. You will be convicted by an all white male jury. Negroes don't sit on juries in Mississippi. Neither do women. Neither do Catholics or Jews. It's going to be mostly Baptists, and they'll convict you in about 15 minutes of deliberation.

You'll probably get a sentence of four months and $200 fine. And we're urging everybody to stay in jail at least 39 days. And we said, sure. That's what happened. A week later, Captain Ray came and said, we're taking you on a little trip. 10 white Freedom Riders, one Black, male, put us in the back of a paddy wagon driven by a white trustee who was a con with a loaded gun on.

We started to sing soon as we were in the paddy wagon. This guy slams on the brakes, comes back, hand on the gun. Opens the door and says to us, if you bastards continue to sing, I'll just soon shoot you than look at you. So we stopped singing, 'cause he looked serious.

[LAUGHS]

DAN OLSON: Minnesota Freedom Rider Marv Davidoff. He's recounting his arrest, jailing, and then imprisonment for 45 days in Mississippi in 1961. He and other civil rights activists were testing a Supreme Court ruling that banned segregation in interstate transportation at bus terminals and other facilities. Later this hour, we'll hear from another Minnesotan, Claire O'Connor, one of the relatively few white women Freedom Riders. The women's experiences were different from the men.

Nearly all of the Freedom Riders arrested by police in Mississippi for trying to desegregate buses and terminals there were sent to the Mississippi State Penitentiary called Parchman Farm. Parchman was notorious for its brutal conditions. Here's more of my conversation with Marv Davidoff.

MARV DAVIDOFF: We enter the grounds of Parchman and we look out the window. Here are Black men whose striped uniforms ran, I think, horizontally behind hand plows pulled by donkeys plowing up the earth. A Black trustee whose stripes ran up and down with a three-pronged thing and a long pole like a broom pole into the earth. And he's resting on that loaded shotgun on his back garden then. And a white man astride a white horse with a big sombrero.

The overseer in a covered wagon, the water wagon. And I said to the guys, look at that. Gone with the Wind was a figment of Margaret Mitchell's imagination. But here it is. That first night, I was listening to people singing freedom songs. People who later became the SNCC Freedom Singers and took the songs of the movement nationwide. Beautiful voices.

People singing, keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on. O freedom, o freedom. Before I be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave. Go home to my Lord and be free. And I was crying. Not because they were punishing us. But because of the nobility of everybody in there. And they brought Black and white women up three weeks later.

And I thought I had a feeling of blessed human solidarity like I'd never had in my life with a group of people. And I thought there's no other place on Earth that I should be but right here in this cell with these people. I had that feeling with people I didn't know and couldn't see. And I knew what I would do rest of my life. And I've been doing it, looking for that feeling again, which comes when you're taking risks to make radical social change.

DAN OLSON: Marv Davidoff. This is Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson. Davidoff and many of the other Freedom Riders served a month and a half in prison in Mississippi and were bailed out. Entertainers including Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and lots of other public figures helped raise the bail money. Davidoff recalls hundreds were at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport to welcome the Minnesota Freedom Riders home.

In 1968, Marv Davidoff founded the Honeywell Project. The Vietnam War was reaching a peak. Davidoff and the other Honeywell Project members organized opposition to Honeywell's weapons business. One of the munitions the Minneapolis based company made was a cluster bomb. The exploding cluster bomb sprayed steel balls in all directions. The bomb maimed and killed anyone near it. Cluster bombs specifically and the US role in the war generally fueled massive anti-war protests in this country.

Eventually, Honeywell spun off its munitions making business to another company, Edina based Alliant Techsystems. Here's more of my conversation with Marv Davidoff.

MARV DAVIDOFF: Honeywell announced they were reducing their dependence on weapons systems. And media came by that day to talk to me. And every media person said to me, you people didn't have anything to do with this. It was a business decision. So I said, look, do you routinely interview marginal radicals? What the hell are you all doing here today if we had nothing to do with it? And everybody knew that we did.

We were a major factor, and Honeywell could not sell their weapons division. New York Times had called me. And I said to them, if you can get by your editor, say that anyone who buys their weapons division gets us, too. And he got it by the editor. No one would buy it. And they then created Alliant Techsystems, completely separate company. And because we have a permanent war economy. And the group's been out there for 10 years.

DAN OLSON: Is it frustrating? I mean, it doesn't seem as though the protests have had the impact of lessening our war-making, our interest in making war.

MARV DAVIDOFF: Well, as I say, we understood we have a permanent war economy. Billions into this all over the country. And it's going to take a local, regional, national, and international movement to deal with this. It's so integrated into the substance of capitalism that looks to me like we're going to have to make a revolution to deal with this and develop a serious revolutionary movement.

It has to be a mass movement of people who are serious, who will strive to get peace conversion with no loss of jobs. So the workers will not say, here they come to take our jobs away. Because every billion that you're able to take out of weapons production, if you put it into socially useful production, you would create 10,000 new jobs that are labor intensive, high paying, and productive. That's what we need.

DAN OLSON: Marv Davidoff. He says he's been arrested 51 times. Davidoff says the FBI has been keeping tabs on him since 1953. And his file, which he says he's seen, is more than 1,000 pages. Davidoff, among his other activities, teaches a course in active nonviolence at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. Davidoff is pointed in his criticism of the United States government. Here's the final portion of our conversation.

How do we counteract the bad guys in the world who, regardless of how many jobs we create, peacetime jobs we create, still have it in their mind that they want to rule, they want to control, and they want to do it by force?

MARV DAVIDOFF: You just described the United States. And we are the bad guys in the world. We're the greatest terrorist state in the world. All you have to do is look at the history. Guatemala in 1954, overthrowing a legally elected government of Arbenz. The overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran. Dominican Republic. The attacks on Cuba. The attempt to kill Fidel Castro.

The war in Vietnam, where they murdered three to five million people while losing 59,000 US people. The wars in Central America, where the US contributed towards killing couple hundred thousand, mostly Native people. And the slaughter in Iraq. So who are the bad guys? We are the bad guys.

DAN OLSON: You continue to live in the country. You continue to stay in the country. Have you been tempted to renounce it?

MARV DAVIDOFF: Absolutely not. I look at what Che Guevara said. I envy you, Americans. You live in the heart of the beast. Whatever. The US has a foot on the necks of impoverished people at home and abroad. If we're able to take that foot off their necks, people can stand up and blossom and prosper. So my task is to create the first American revolution. And we would do this with a radical kind of nonviolence. That's what I teach at St. Thomas.

DAN OLSON: What would motivate people to move towards your vision of nonviolent revolution?

MARV DAVIDOFF: Well, there is, despite everything, a moral, spiritual, ethical drive in many Americans. They say they're religious, Christian. I mean, who the hell was Jesus? A nonviolent revolutionary. There's no doubt of that whatsoever.

DAN OLSON: Minneapolis activist Marv Davidoff. This is Voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson. Davidoff and six other white Minnesota Freedom Riders were arrested in Mississippi in 1961. They were part of more than 400 people, both African American and white, who tested a Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregated transportation services in this country, including bus terminals.

Claire O'Connor was 19 years old and the only white woman Freedom Rider from Minnesota. O'Connor grew up mostly in St. Paul, where she says when the family gathered around the dining room table, the staple besides food was talk, often about politics. O'Connor was a University of Minnesota student when she signed on to become a Freedom Rider. She and the others traveled to Memphis, where they got careful instructions from the organizers about how to dress and behave. I talked with O'Connor at her Eden Prairie home.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: There were requirements that-- I mean, along with absolute commitment to nonviolence, we were absolutely committed to nonviolence as a strategy. You didn't have to believe it as your life's work, but you did have to accept it as a strategy.

The other thing that you had to have as a strategy is you had to be dressed appropriately for young men and women at the day. And so I'd had my hair in curlers. And of course, it was all combed out and--

DAN OLSON: What was that about, looking appropriate? Why was that an important part of the strategy?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Well, I mean, I think it had a lot to do with the fact of the times women in particular had to dress in a certain manner. Or they were looked down on.

DAN OLSON: And there might be cameras there taking pictures.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Of course. Or mug shots. Absolutely. And then the press was very likely involved. Although there was no press when we were arrested. There was nobody there. It was Sunday morning. And in the South, they go to church.

DAN OLSON: Was there literally anyone there to take notice when you were in the bathroom, when you were walking through the colored section of the bus depot?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Nobody. Nobody. I gather nobody got off the bus. Or if they did, they stayed away.

DAN OLSON: Was that a little anticlimactic? You'd come down to strike a blow for freedom and for integration.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Never thought of it. Never thought of it that way.

DAN OLSON: Claire O'Connor. Historian Raymond Arsenault recently published a comprehensive account of the Freedom Rides. The first Riders, who were both African American and white, were beaten, some nearly to death. Buses were firebombed. A white mob literally laid siege to them in a Montgomery, Alabama, church.

By the time Claire O'Connor and the six other Minnesota Freedom Riders signed up, the threat of violence was still high, but none of them were victims. However, they were immediately arrested when they crossed over into so-called colored areas in bus terminals. Dozens of arrested Freedom Riders were packed into county jail cells in Jackson, Mississippi. Here's more of my conversation with Claire O'Connor.

So your mugshot is taken, and what happens then?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Then they put me in a cell. And there was already another woman there who had been arrested, was from Chicago, and she was a Freedom Rider as well. So she had been arrested.

DAN OLSON: From another bus.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Before, yeah. She had been arrested the night before. And she was glad to see me, because she'd been all on her own. We were taken to trial later in the day. And we were all then taken together. There had already been some other men arrested, too. So all of us went to trial. And it was a group trial, and we were all found guilty.

DAN OLSON: Did you think that your skin color would somehow, if not, save you? If that's not exactly the right word, then at least you'd be spared some of the worst violence in treatment.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Yeah, we actually did assume that. And fair assumption. This is a racist society. We also thought that women-- at least I thought that women would be less likely to meet violence. And that was generally true. Although there were women and Euro-American men and women who met violence. But generally you would think.

And then we had the protection of people at home. Families in Minnesota. And they took on the responsibility, our families took on the responsibility to keep all of this in the attention of the public, so.

DAN OLSON: Really? So what did your mother and father say about this?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Well, my father had died by then. And my mother was very much in favor of it. And she was very frightened and she wanted to know-- this was before cell phones. So I mean, I-- she had to wait until I called her from jail to know exactly what had happened. But I mean, she was worried as a mother would be. But thrilled that I had the opportunity.

DAN OLSON: Minnesota Freedom Rider Claire O'Connor. This is Voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson. The roots of the Freedom Rides go back to 1944. Irene Rogers, a young African American mother riding a bus from her job in the state of Virginia to her home in Maryland, declined to give up her seat to a white person. She was arrested, convicted, and fined for disturbing the peace.

Her challenge went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The justices ruled that segregation of the country's interstate transportation services violated the United States Constitution. It would take 15 years and the action by the Freedom Riders to breathe life into the decision. Here's more of Claire O'Connor recalling her arrest and jailing in Jackson, Mississippi.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: By that time, there must have been about 10 or 15 young women in the cell, Freedom Riders. We were never mixed with the general population throughout the whole time that we were there. So we--

DAN OLSON: Why not, do you suppose?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: I would imagine-- actually, in Ray Arsenault's book, he says that they were a little worried about getting the African Americans exposed. But there would have been horrible violence if the Euro-Americans had been put in with other Euro-Americans in the South. There would have been horrible violence. And they didn't want that kind of attention.

DAN OLSON: Were you mixed, African American and white, in the county cell?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: No, no. We were all white in the cell. I was in, and there was another cell right next to us of Black women. And then the men-- I mean, we were segregated by gender and ethnicity.

DAN OLSON: What did you do during the day?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Oh, we did a lot of things. I mean, people were coming in. The job, I mean, what we were doing, the strategy was to fill the jails. And, boy, did we. And so every couple of days, new people were arrested. And then we'd hear the news. And we'd welcome them and get to know them. My memory is that we had a pretty good time. Yeah. And--

DAN OLSON: You were sitting in a jail cell in the Deep South, Claire O'Connor. And you're telling me that your spirits were still OK?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: My spirits were good, and we filled our time. And I mean, we were all away from home. And most of us-- not all of us, but most of us were young college students. And--

DAN OLSON: You had no fear, then, that you would be maltreated or in any way beaten or in some other way--

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: No. By that time-- at least we didn't. By that time, there'd already been people from May 24th to now, June 11th, there were already a lot of people. And so we knew from their experiences that there wasn't a lot that was going to happen outside of the things like no privacy and the bathroom, the one bathroom in the cell for all of us, there was no privacy at all, including from the guards that were walking around in the outside, that kind of stuff. The food was terrible.

DAN OLSON: What was the food?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Grits and beans and rice and grits and beans and rice. And cornbread, and cornbread, and cornbread.

DAN OLSON: It sounds really small-minded to say this in a question or in a statement. But I suppose for some people, the loss of privacy would be one of the most severe deprivations. Going to the bathroom, washing up.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: I suppose. I suppose. But my memory of it is-- and partly because what I'll tell you happened afterwards. There is another chapter to being in jail. Partly this seemed like a good time. Because later on, it got really bad.

DAN OLSON: Was there singing at this point in the county jail?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Absolutely. We sang all the time. The other thing we did was that we did ballet at the bar. It was a cell probably about as big as this room, my living room.

DAN OLSON: So maybe 15 by 15.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Yeah, yeah. Actually, I do remember it was 12 by 15. And we slept all on the floor. We had mattresses that we would roll up during the day.

DAN OLSON: How many of you do you think there were?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: I don't know. There's got to have been about 20 until-- for about two weeks. And so there were these three cement block walls with one-- we had a big window as well, with bars on it. And then one wall of bars. And so we used to do ballet at the bar. And someone in the other cell was studying ballet, and so she used to call the movements for us. And we'd all line up at the bar and do our plies and all that.

And one of the other things we spent a lot of time doing was-- we were all college students and very excited about what we were learning. And so we would lecture. We would talk about what we were studying. If we'd had a class in this or a class and that. And I'd had classes in anthropology and I found anthropology to be very exciting. And so I would tell people what I learned in my freshman anthropology class, and they'd tell me what they learned in their history classes. And so we spent a lot of time doing that.

We couldn't really converse with the young women in the next cell without yelling. Now, some of them had been arrested with some of the people who were in our cell, and they used to line up on either side of the wall. We couldn't see them. And they would talk to each other. But you had to be pretty much just right by the bars there, so.

DAN OLSON: What were the guards reacting to at this point? Were they just not really paying attention to you, or were they becoming friendly or convivial?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: No, not really friendly. I think there was a difference of opinion among them. But we saw trustees more than we saw the official police. So--

DAN OLSON: Trustees?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Trustees, which would have been prisoners that were trusted. It's probably where it comes, the name comes from.

DAN OLSON: African American and white, or just white?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: I remember a Latino guy a lot. And the reason I remember him was one of the things that happened every day was what they called store. And this guy, who was a trustee, would come around with a cardboard box full of stuff to sell to us. And cigarettes and candy and shampoo and things like that.

Well, it turned out that a lot of times, they were selling stuff to us that had been sent to us in packages. So we were buying. And we all smoked in those days. And so we were buying the cigarettes that our families-- ooh, that was back in the day-- that our families had sent us and our shampoo and all these kinds of things. There was a pair of flip-flops that was for sale. They weren't called that then. I forget what they were called. That was for sale, and somebody bought them. Well, later on, I found out my sister in a box of stuff and sent me my flip-flops. And I mean, I didn't even know them. So they were sold to us.

So the other is that when we got too loud and when we sang too much or acted up-- we used to do folk dancing and do all kinds of stuff. And when we got too loud, they would clean us out. And they would come in and take all our paper and pencil. This was punishment. And just strip us down. Not our clothes. We were wearing our regular clothes. And take all our cigarettes and all our paper and pans and books, and whatever we had would be just taken away.

And then we'd have to wait till a new bunch of people were arrested in order to get more cigarettes and paper and pencil and books. And they wouldn't take that away until they got mad at us again for acting up. And then they'd come and take everything away. And sometimes they'd stop store because they were punishing us.

DAN OLSON: Did anyone become quite despondent and really worrisome to the rest of the group in terms of their spirits or anything like that?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Never. Never. Actually, one of the women in my cell kept a secret diary. You remember, everything-- we had stuff taken away from us. So she had a secret diary that she'd wrapped up in the hem and she'd sew up every day into the hem of her skirt so they never knew she had it.

And in there-- I just looked over it the other day. I've got a copy. I had it transcribed afterwards. And I had forgotten completely that at one point, we had a hunger strike. And I'd forgotten that. I guess it just wasn't a big deal, because the food was awful. They had catfish with the head and even the whiskers on with breading. It was just-- anyhow. And coffee with molasses.

So anyway, there was a hunger strike. And the reason we had the hunger strike that went on for just three days was because they took the men to Parchman State Penitentiary. And so we decided we were going to have a hunger strike. Well, somebody fainted. And after two days, and she fainted.

And so there was a decision that was-- not everybody was comfortable to end the hunger strike. Not everybody was comfortable with that. So there was some discussion about it. And according to her diary-- and I don't remember this at all. There was a lot of tension. And there was tension between the two cells between now this cell of Euro-American women and African American women. And the reason there was the tension is because the African American women decided to call off the hunger strike.

And given that we were there to help with a campaign that they had started, then the decision was that we would go with their decision. And not everybody agreed completely with that. But that's the only point. I can't imagine us all being there all that time, 24 hours and seven days a week. Having to share this one bathroom, this toilet, and not having any tension. But I don't remember any at all.

DAN OLSON: Claire O'Connor. This is Voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson. The convivial, if cramped conditions at the county jail in Jackson came to an abrupt end, and the mood darkened. It wasn't clear if the administration of President John F. Kennedy was paying attention to the Civil Rights movement and would act to force Mississippi and other states to abide by the Supreme Court ruling striking down segregated interstate transportation.

Then Mississippi raised the stakes by sending the Freedom Riders to a maximum security prison. Here's more of my conversation with Claire O'Connor.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: About two weeks into my stay-- now, other people had been there longer. They sent us to Parchman State Penitentiary, and that was a very different experience. This was a maximum security jail. And we were put into cells that were then two to a cell. We were isolated from each other. I mean, the cells were all lined up on one bank of cells. It was like every picture you've ever seen of a maximum security penitentiary. Except we didn't have the tiers. It was just one floor.

And everything was taken away. Everything was taken away, including our clothes. And we were given prison clothes, which were black and white stripes. I mean, just what a cliche. But that's what it was. And nothing even to tie our hair back, nothing. And we were given the Bible, the New Testament. And that was it.

Until when we first arrived, the warden came to greet us all. And he said, welcome, ladies. Now we're all in these cells, all facing him. And it was two to a cell, and they were obviously segregated cells. Although the wing was integrated. And we were happy about that. We integrated the wing. The wing. But the men were all in another wing, so we couldn't even hear them.

And he came to welcome us. Welcome, y'all. We got the best biscuits in the state. I mean, this guy was just really weird. But somebody said, do you have Old Testaments? Because we just had New Testaments. And so this one person said, can we have Old Testaments? And he said, do all of you want Old Testaments? And we all said, yes, we want Old Testaments instead of the New Testament that they'd given us, the King James.

And so he said, oh, y'all are Jewish. Some of my best friends are Jewish. And we just broke up. But it was pretty much the last laugh that we had. It was a pretty brutal experience. We were treated like cattle. The trustees and guards would come in and just walk up and down the line with the keys and just rattle their keys and smoke their cigarettes and drink their pop and walk up and stare at us. We were allowed showers twice a week. And the women trustees would come in and watch us and make comments about our bodies and--

DAN OLSON: What kind of comments?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Oh, that one's got a fat ass. And, honey, you got to quit eating our whole-- it was that kind of demeaning commentary. We could no longer talk to each other. Here, we'd been sharing all our life stories and all that we knew and all we were learning in college. We couldn't do that anymore.

DAN OLSON: What happened if you-- what was the--

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Oh, we just couldn't be heard.

DAN OLSON: Oh, it was not a case of them ordering you not to speak. It was physically impossible.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: It was physically-- we could talk to the people. We could be heard by the people next to us. And my cellmate and I were in the first cell, so we had nobody on our right. And the people just on the-- all the way down, there were 13 cells all the way down.

DAN OLSON: Had your mood changed by now? Had something happened to your view of what was going on?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Well, yeah. We knew that they were upping the ante. I mean, at first we thought, oh, they'll never do this. And then they did. We knew that we were in this battle with the forces of the South. And I don't even want to say Mississippi, but the segregation, the forces that maintain segregation.

DAN OLSON: You had held out hope, some of you, that no, no, we won't have to go serve hard time. We'll get out of the county jail. We'll get back on a bus or a plane and we'll go home.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Right. Well, we actually had held out hope that we would win. And everybody who came in to the cell, everybody who was newly arrested, most of our questions were about the strategy. Are things working? Are these people paying attention? What is Kennedy doing? And that was a really big part of it. The Kennedys, the two brothers, were not responding. I mean, we have all come down with a history of the Kennedys.

They were not responding to the need. This was interstate travel. And that was the issue. This was a national issue. States' rights was not part of this deal. And so a lot of it was that. I mean, we didn't think so much about whether we were going to do hard time or soft time. We thought more in terms of whether the strategy was going to work. And when they up the ante, then what are you going to do? How are you going to respond? You've got to up the ante, too. Well, we already were arrested.

And what else do you do? Do you go on a hunger strike and die? That isn't the kind of thing that anybody was asking of us. And that's a whole different kind of campaign. And you would conduct it in a very different way. So then we wait to see what the strategy is, what others are planning and how people are going to deal with the fact that Mississippi has just upped the ante.

DAN OLSON: Claire O'Connor, a Freedom Rider from Minnesota in 1961. This is Voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson. The Freedom Rides were successful. It would take until 1965. But eventually, the Supreme Court ruling banning segregated interstate travel became a reality. The Freedom Rides came after the lunch counter sit-ins of the late '50s.

Still to come were countless other actions, including the march on Washington in 1963. And then Freedom Summer, 1964, where thousands of volunteers, including Claire O'Connor, fanned out across the South to register Black voters. Claire O'Connor says there's been progress in creating justice and equality. However, she says racism is deeply embedded in our society.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Racism is still very much a part of our system.

DAN OLSON: What is the system? Who is the system? Is it a way of looking at the world? Is it a belief?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Yes, yes.

DAN OLSON: Is it how children are raised?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: It is. Yes, it's all of that. And that's what promotes the system. I mean, it has economics. It has social values, mores, all that kind of stuff. It's very complex.

DAN OLSON: Is the system negative or positive? Or was it without value? It just is?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: It just is. It just is. There are ways of changing it, and there are things that I think should be changed. We should be in a society living with values and in a system that cares more for each other.

DAN OLSON: Are we promoting that now, do you think, in this time and in this place, in this country?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: No, no.

DAN OLSON: Why not? How do you see it not happening?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Because it's definitely bootstraps thinking. That the basic thinking is if you haven't succeeded-- and you as much as we progressive right-thinking-- left-thinking Minnesotans-- I mean, Minnesotans are nicer to each other. Minnesota nice is more than just a superficial thing. We do value each other more. We do want to help people who aren't doing well. Who are, quote, unquote, "falling through the cracks," as if there was something that was cracked. But anyway.

Underneath it all, if someone is not doing well, if somebody is living on welfare and they have children from different husbands, they're not succeeding, they're not getting jobs, they're not getting education, there is something wrong with them. And that is something we go back to over and over and over. In other words, I mean, for most people, the bootstrap thinking means they're not successful because they're not successful. It's they're not good enough to be successful. They're not adequate enough. They're not enough of a person. And that's why they're not successful. So it's that kind of circular thinking.

DAN OLSON: Have we made progress from the day you were arrested for disturbing the peace in Jackson, Mississippi, because you walked into the colored bus depot waiting room?

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the other thing I wanted to say, I meant to get back to and I'm sorry I didn't, I actually in 1964 and '65, I worked in Mississippi on voter registration. So I lived there for a year. And we went back for a reunion in '94. Yeah, '94.

I always had felt like I didn't think we'd made any progress. There were lives lost. And I wondered whether this was all worth it. And so it was a question I posed to some of the people that I'd worked with in Panola County, which is where I worked in Mississippi. And I said, is it better? Are you glad? I mean, they had sacrificed absolutely everything. I mean, and people had died and disappeared. They lost their jobs. They lost their homes. Fire bombed, and all kinds of horrible things that they had put on the line in order to win the right to vote.

And they said, no doubt. Things were better. Absolutely no doubt about it. And so I decided that my thoughts didn't matter. What mattered was it was better for them. And I mean, they were genuine about that and pointed out things that were different. The county agent-- that's the word I'm looking for. This was a rural county, and so the county agent was very important to them. And I was introduced to an African American who was the county agent.

And the sheriff. And we went back for a Freedom Rider reunion, and it was actually we were introduced to the police chief, who was African American, who was the boss of white policemen. Those things are better for them. Is it better for-- it isn't-- I mean, if I think about myself in all this, it's different for me. I can now ride around in the South with whoever I want. When I was there before, I couldn't. I couldn't be in a car with an African American man. So, I mean, in the South, it's freer. But the systemic racism is still there.

DAN OLSON: Claire O'Connor, thank you so much for your time. What a pleasure to speak with you.

CLAIRE O'CONNOR: Oh, thank you.

DAN OLSON: In 1961, Claire O'Connor and six other white Minnesotans were among the hundreds of Freedom Riders who were arrested and served jail and prison time attempting to desegregate interstate travel in the Deep South. This has been Voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, that does it for our Midday program today. Gary Eichten here. I'd like to thank you for tuning in. By the way, all of Dan's Voices of Minnesota are programs are available on our website minnesotapublicradio.org, so check it out. And mugshots also available of Marv Davidoff and Claire O'Connor on our website, as well, minnesotapublicradio.org.

Tomorrow, among other things on Midday, former senators Alan Simpson and Bill Bradley will talk about the best way in their mind to pay for elections in this country. That's tomorrow on Midday. Thanks for tuning in today.

KORVA COLEMAN: Programming is supported by Crompton Seager Tufte, specializing in patent, trademark, and copyright law. From mine to market. Online at cstlaw.com.