Push grows to honor Freedom Riders

A bipartisan group is pushing to lionize the Freedom Riders from the civil rights movement with Congress’s highest civilian honor.

{mosads}Behind Georgia Reps. Hank Johnson (D) and Doug Collins (R), the group introduced legislation Tuesday bestowing the Congressional Gold Medal on hundreds of human rights activists who protested the racial segregation of the Jim Crow era with months of defiant bus and train rides through the South in 1961.

Johnson this week described the riders — a group that includes Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) — as “heroes” whose early activism helped “break the back of segregation.”

“The riders — including my constituent Hank Thomas and my friend and colleague John Lewis — endured insults and beatings and risked their lives more than 50 years ago because they believed in a different future for their children and their grandchildren,” Johnson said in a statement.

Collins delivered a similar message, saying the riders’ influence can still be felt even more than five decades later.

“They broke down barriers and continue to provide our country hope that we can overcome any difficulties with a common purpose,” Collins said.

The legislation has 134 other co-sponsors, including Reps. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Johnson and Collins had introduced the same legislation in the last Congress. That bill attracted the backing of 120 co-sponsors, leaving supporters hopeful that the growing number is some indication the proposal has legs this year.

If the proposal is adopted, the Freedom Riders would join a growing list of human rights activists honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the four young victims of the infamous 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy advocate.