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Scan here to hear Freedom Riders describe their experiences in a Mississippi Jail:

enough, replied Farmer, but they would feel better still if the state of Mississippi dropped the charges against them, released them from jail, and let them return to the bus station and sit where they liked. That way, said Farmer, he could call off other Freedom Rides in Mississippi, and the police could quit wasting their time arresting people for being in the wrong waiting room. In Farmer’s 1985 autobiography, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement , he recalled that the jailer sounded sad when he spoke. “Mr. Farmer, you know good’n well they ain’t gonna to do that,” he said softly. “Maybe when my grandchildren grow up, they’ll do something like that. Lot “a the young people down here don’t feel like the old folks do; these things ain’t goin” to go on forever. They cain’t. Them boys with you is good boys. They ain’t criminals. They hadn’t oughta be in jail here. They ain’t done nothing—they ain’t killed nobody, or robbed, or raped. They just wanta be treated like everybody else.” The jailer, Farmer wrote later, lowered his eyes as he continued. “If I was a ni—if I was colored,” he said, “I’d be doin’ the same thing as them boys is. I understan’ these boys. But,” he added, gesturing toward the cells that held the white Freedom

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C I V I L R I GH T S L E A D E R S : J AM E S FA RM E R