Scholars:

Dr. Adam Fairclough is the Director of the Arthur Miller Center for American History and a professor of American History at East Anglia University , in Britain. Dr. Fairclough has written extensively about America ’s Civil Rights Movement, particularly in Louisiana. His acclaimed book, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 , published in 1995, won the Lillian Smith Award for Non-Fiction and is widely considered to be the definitive work on Louisiana civil rights political history. Also of note, is his book To Redeem the Soul of America : The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr., which won the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights’ Outstanding Book Award in 1987.

Dr. Douglas Brinkley currently serves as the Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and is a Professor of History at the University of New Orleans. He is the author of ten award-winning books, including biographies of Dean Acheson, Jimmy Carter, and Rosa Parks. The New York Times has chosen three of his books “Notable Books of the Year.” He is a frequent commentator on American studies for NPR's Weekend Edition and is a frequent guest on national television programs. Brinkley discusses the boycott’s impact on Montgomery and the larger Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. Mary Hebert Price serves as the director of LSU’s T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History and is also the University Archivist. She received her PhD. In 1999, her dissertation entitled “Beyond Black and White: The Civil Rights Movement in Baton Rouge, Louisiana 1945-1972.” Price holds memberships in many professional organizations, including the Oral History Association, the Southern Historical Association and the Society if American Archivists.

Veronica Freeman is a professor of American history at Southern University. Her academic focus is 20 th century history with a concentration on politics and race. Ms. Freeman is one of a handful of academicians to focus on the Baton Rouge bus boycott. She has conducted extensive research, including compiling a collection of oral history interviews with primary players in the boycott leadership.

Dr. Anthony Badger is Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University and has written extensively on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the beginning of America’s Civil Rights Movement and the dynamics of democracy in modern American History. He was Tulane University ’s Spring 2000 Andrew W. Mellon Professor. Dr. Badger discusses the political climate of Baton Rouge at the time of the boycott and the impact the demonstration had on later instances of civil protest, namely Dr. Martin Luther King’s organization of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955.

Dr. Lance Hill is the co-Founder and Executive Director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University , which seeks to facilitate dialogue between different racial groups. His area of expertise is Civil Rights Movement, particularly in Louisiana. His book, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Self-Defense and Civil Right Movement, published in 2004. Dr. Hill served as our independent evaluator throughout our program’s development and production.

Ambassador Andrew Young is a Louisiana native and public policy professor of policy studies at Georgia State University ’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. He was top aid to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement and served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He presently serves on the board of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change. He also served three terms in the United States House of Representatives, two terms as Mayor of Atlanta, and in 1977, President Jimmy Carter named him Ambassador to the United Nations.

Juan Williams is one of America's leading journalists, is a senior correspondent for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He also works on documentaries and participates in NPR's efforts to explore television opportunities. Williams is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, which was released in paperback in February 2000. He is also the author of the nonfiction bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, the companion volume to the critically acclaimed television series. This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience appeared in February 2003. This book was the basis for a six-part public broadcasting TV documentary that aired in June 2003. In 2004, Williams became involved with AARP's Voices of Civil Rights project, leading a veteran team of reporters and editors in the production of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience. The book presents the harrowing and haunting eyewitness accounts of some 50 activists who served as foot soldiers and field generals in the Civil Rights Movement.

Participants:

Rev. T.J. Jemison is the longtime Minister of the Mount Zion First Baptist Church and is often regarded as the leader of the Baton Rouge bus boycott and a pioneering Civil Rights Activist in Baton Rouge. Rev. Jemison will give personal accounts of the racial situation in Baton Rouge in the 1950s and detail the boycott. He eventually followed in his father’s footsteps as president of the National Baptist Convention, a position he held for 12 years.

Willis Reed first worked as a reporter for a local African American paper in 1936. He served as a supply clerk in World ward II and was sent to the Pacific and the Panama Canal . When he returned he began working for improvements in the conditions of the African American community. By 1953, he helped found the First ward Voters League with Robert Guerney, and Columbus Dunn. The group became an influential voting block in Baton Rouge politics. During the 1960’s Reed worked for the Federal Civil Rights Commission, where he was instrumental in labor and education negotiations in racially charged Bogalusa, Louisiana . He has dedicated his life to speaking out for changes for the black community, even running for State Representative at the age of 80. Today he is the owner and operator the African-American newspaper, The Baton Rouge Post.

Johnnie Jones a veteran of the Normandy Invasion in WWII, returned home to Baton Rouge to begin registering voters in the Scotlandville and Baton Rouge area. He graduated from Southern University’s newly opened Law School just days before the 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott. He was approached by Reverend T.J. Jemison to represent Jemison and other members of the United Defense League in the lawsuit filed against the city of Baton Rouge to desegregate city buses. Jones argued with his clients at the time that the case should have been filed in federal rather than state court, but in the end, he followed his client’s direction. In the years following the bus boycott, Jones authored a number of successful civil rights arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court including the most famous one involving students who staged a sit in at the Kress Department store downtown. The case lead to the removal of race classifications in public facilities, on election ballots and in restaurants.

Hazel Freeman grew up attending one of the first funded Rosenwald Schools in Louisiana that was built on her parents’ property. She and her siblings and neighbors lived in a home her parents built while they attended classes at Southern University’s high school. Later in life she went on to obtain a Master’s Degree from Columbia University. She served as Secretary of the Second Ward Voters League for a number of years. In early 1950, when she and a friend were turned away from the front door of the Baton Rouge office of Volunteers of America, they decided to found their own organization to fulfill the needs of African Americans in the community. The founded CAWSC, The Community Association for the Welfare of School Children The nationally recognized service organizations helps hundreds of disadvantaged Baton Rouge children and their families each year.

Lewis Doherty, III’s family was already involved in politics when he decided to run for City Council in 1952. At 26, her was one of the youngest ever elected to the office. H e served one term and decided he preferred the law to politics. After graduating from L.S.U. Law School he ran for City Judge in 1960. In 1961, he was the first City Court Judge to desegregate seating in his courtroom, at the request of Johnnie Jones’ law partner Bruce Bell. He was elected and served until 1968. He then ran for State District Court, where he served for a number of years. After that he was appointed to various Circuit Court positions around the state, appointments in which he still serves today.

Horatio Thompson began his career in business selling drug store items out of his dorm room to fellow Southern University students. He branched out to offer a car transportation service to Southern University’s President and school dignitaries. This lead to the opening of a taxi business and eventually lead him to approach Esso-Standard Oil about leasing a gas station franchise in Baton Rouge. By 1954 Mr. Thompson was beginning development of the first large scale African American neighborhood community, Southern Heights, in Baton Rouge. He later went on to amass a real-estate empire and operate a number of businesses along Scenic Highway in Scotlandville.

Martha White moved to Baton Rouge as a young woman. In the early 1950s, she purchased her own home with the wages she earned as a housekeeper. She still lives in the same home and is still working to support herself.