Raymond Arsenault | |
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Born | |
Alma mater | Princeton University Brandeis University |
Occupation(s) | academic, historian |
Known for | Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (2006) |
Raymond Ostby Arsenault (born January 6, 1948) is an American historian and academic in Florida, United States of America. He has taught at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg campus since 1980 and is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program (with Gary Mormino). [1] Arsenault is a specialist in the political, social, and environmental history of the American South.
Arsenault wrote about the 1961 Freedom Rides in 2006. His work on the critical event in the Civil Rights Movement became the basis of the 2010 documentary, Freedom Riders . He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in an episode dedicated to Freedom Riders. [2] [3] [4] He has been awarded the Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award of the Southern Historical Association and the 2006 PSP Award for Excellence Honorable Mention History & American Studies. [5]
Raymond Arsenault was born in Hyannis, Massachusetts in 1948. He holds a B.A. in History from Princeton University (1969, magna cum laude), M.A. Brandeis University (1974) (American History), and a PhD in American History from Brandeis University (1981). [6]
Arsenault taught at the University of Minnesota, Brandeis University, and Universite d’Angers, in France, where he was a Fulbright Lecturer in 1984-85. He has served as a consultant for numerous museums and public institutions, including the National Park Service, the National Civil Rights Museum, the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy University in Alabama, [7] and the United States Information Agency.
He is married to Kathleen Hardee Arsenault, retired University library dean. The couple have two daughters, Amelia (32) and Anne (29). [6]
Freddie Lee Shuttlesworth was an American civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, initiated and was instrumental in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, and continued to work against racism and for alleviation of the problems of the homeless in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he took up a pastorate in 1961. He returned to Birmingham after his retirement in 2007. He worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, though the two men often disagreed on tactics and approaches.
Diane Judith Nash is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement.
Stanley Earl Nelson Jr. is an American documentary filmmaker and a MacArthur Fellow known as a director, writer and producer of documentaries examining African-American history and experiences. He is a recipient of the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards.
The Journey of Reconciliation, also called "First Freedom Ride", was a form of nonviolent direct action to challenge state segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States. Bayard Rustin and 18 other men and women were the early organizers of the two-week journey that began on April 9, 1947. The participants started their journey in Washington, D.C., traveled as far south as North Carolina, before returning to Washington, D.C.
Bernard Lafayette, Jr. is an American civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee.
Carol Ruth Silver is an American lawyer and civil rights activist. She was a Freedom Rider, arrested and incarcerated for 40 days in Mississippi. She was among those on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors allegedly targeted by Dan White in the Moscone–Milk assassinations, but escaped assassination because she was not in her office at the time of the murders.
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.
The First Baptist Church on North Ripley Street in Montgomery, Alabama, is a historic landmark. Founded in downtown Montgomery in 1867 as one of the first black churches in the area, it provided an alternative to the second-class treatment and discrimination African-Americans faced at the other First Baptist Church in the city.
Charles Person is an African-American civil rights activist who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides. He was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Following his 1960 graduation from David Tobias Howard High School, he attended Morehouse College. Person was the youngest Freedom Rider on the original Congress of Racial Equality Freedom Ride. His memoir Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider was published by St. Martin's Press in 2021.
James Zwerg is an American retired minister who was involved with the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s.
William E. Harbour was an American civil rights activist who participated in the Freedom Rides. He was one of several youth activists involved in the latter actions, along with John Lewis, William Barbee, Paul Brooks, Charles Butler, Allen Cason, Catherine Burks, and Lucretia Collins.
Edward Norval "Ed" Blankenheim was an American civil rights activist and one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who rode Greyhound buses in 1961 as part of the Civil Rights Movement, in an effort to desegregate transit systems.
Genevieve Hughes Houghton is known as one of three women participants in the original 13-person Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Rides.
Freedom Riders is a 2010 American historical documentary film, produced by Firelight Media for PBS's American Experience. The film is based in part on the book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by historian Raymond Arsenault. Directed by Stanley Nelson, it marked the 50th anniversary of the first Freedom Ride in May 1961 and first aired on May 16, 2011. It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The film was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show program titled, Freedom Riders: 50th Anniversary. Nelson was helped in the making of the documentary by Arsenault and Derek Catsam, an associate professor at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.
Henry "Hank" James Thomas is an African American civil rights activist and entrepreneur. Thomas was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who traveled on Greyhound and Trailways buses through the South in 1961 to protest racial segregation, holding demonstrations at bus stops along the way.
Margaret Winonah Beamer Myers was an American political activist, who, in 1961 at the age of 19, became a Freedom Rider. Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960). She was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi and spent almost six months in Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman Farm, the oldest prison and the only maximum-security prison for men in the state of Mississippi. Of all the Freedom Riders, white or black, Winonah Beamer served the longest sentence and was the only Freedom Rider who served her full term.
Jack Emerson Davis is an author and professor of history in Florida. He holds the Rothman Family Endowed Chair in the Humanities and teaches environmental history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida. In 2002-2003, he taught on a Fulbright award at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan.
Catherine Burks-Brooks was an American civil rights movement activist, teacher, social worker, jewelry retailer, and newspaper editor.
Sara Jane "Sally" Rowley was an American jewelry-maker and civil rights activist.
Bruce Carver Boynton was an American civil rights leader who inspired the Freedom Riders movement and advanced the cause of racial equality by a landmark supreme court case Boynton v. Virginia.