Nearly a century after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on 6 December 1865, racial segregation, quite similar in many respects to the former apartheid of South Africa, still existed throughout much of the American south. After the US Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the burgeoning civil rights movement began to gather steam and confidence in its agenda to break racial barriers from Boston, Massachusetts to Biloxi, Mississippi..
In 1961, two organizations, CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality) and SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), decided to act on a court ruling one year earlier that prohibited racial segregation in businesses that catered to interstate travelers. Restaurants at bus terminals in the south, for example, could not refuse service or segregate black visitors passing through on public transportation from northern states - where segregation was not officially practiced (although it certainly existed unofficially).
.
On 4 May, the first of many 'Freedom Rides' took off from Washington, DC with six white and seven black people ultimately bound for New Orleans. The plan was both simple and powerful. Freedom Riders would get off the bus in the segregated south at various stops during the trip, walk into a restaurant, sit down together and attempt to order food. If asked to separate or leave, they would refuse. Why should they leave or separate? Common sense, truth and even the law was now on their side.
.
The forces of bigotry and hatred mounted a vigorous counteroffensive. In Alabama, Freedom Riders were refused service and physically attacked by the Ku Klux Klan (a violent racist organization). In Mississippi, they were arrested and thrown in jail. These ugly intimidation tactics were completely counterproductive, however. Millions of Americans gravitated to the cause of the Freedom Riders after seeing these acts of brutality committed by bigoted law enforcement officials on television, and white Americans became ever-more conscious that Thomas Jefferson's revolutionary ideal of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' had not been truly fulfilled for everyone.
.
The Freedom Riders of Saudi Arabia, 2011
.
Fifty years have passed since that momentous summer, and now another generation of Freedom Riders stands poised to challenge the forces of ignorance and oppression. Rather than the United States, freedom rides are being carried out and planned throughout Saudi Arabia to protest against nonsensical laws denying women the right to drive.
.
Manal al-Sharif, a 32 year-old computer consultant, recently posted a YouTube video criticizing Riyadh's ban on female drivers while driving (illegally) herself. In the short clip, she called on her sisters over the Arabian Peninsula to drive en masse on 17 June to defy the prohibition. As soon as the government discovered her Internet activism, censors had her YouTube post removed. Even more audaciously, the government broke into her Twitter account and modified her call for action. Fortunately, however, her YouTube video and posted campaign plans were saved by followers and can be seen and read all over the worldwide web due to being picked up by the mainstream media.
.
As we were all on the bus with the American Freedom Riders to gain justice for an underprivileged and oppressed group of people (either historically or in our spirits today), we must now be in the car with Manal and her sisters in their campaign for 'dignity' (a word Manal uses in her video) - the same dignity that the Freedom Riders of 1961 struggled to achieve.
.
We are one people and one world, and it is our obligation to stand up for anyone being denied his or her human rights. Humanity has been on the road to a world without prejudice for centuries, and the race to the finish line will require uncommon tenacity and an unshakable faith in a better future.
.
As such, we must say to these brave women of Saudi Arabia, who are fighting not only for themselves but on behalf of all people oppressed around the globe, 'Ladies, start your engines.'
.
(Photo: A 'Freedom Rider' bus set on fire by forces of intolerance in Alabama, 1961)
.
To watch Manal's YouTube video, which carries subtitles in English, please click onto the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sowNSH_W2r0ink:
.
J Roquen