World News: Your weekend long reads 🗞️

Saturday, October 9

"We were being told that we could become anything that we wanted to become. So how are you going to become anything you want to become if things stay the way they are?" - Jacqueline Byrd Martin

Good morning, friends of The Short List! It's John, here again with some great reads to kick off your weekend.

The quote above comes from "Seven Days of 1961," an ongoing USA TODAY series exploring how sustained acts of resistance can bring about sweeping change. These stories of courageous action under extraordinary pressure, recounted by the individuals who took part, still reverberate as the nation debates voting access, police brutality and equal rights for all.

"God, protect us and keep us from injury": In May of 1961, an integrated group of 13 civil rights activists began a journey to challenge segregated interstate travel accommodations in the South, which held fast to illegal Jim Crow practices. the Freedom Riders traveled in two groups on separate bus lines, facing brief violence and arrests as they moved deeper South. On May 14, 1961, members of the Ku Klux Klan set one bus ablaze and beat several passengers in another. The bloodshed galvanized the movement: Waves of new Riders poured into the South for months, forcing the country to face the fact of ongoing, unlawful racist practices in the South.

"They were like, 'Look at these folks. They have the audacity to come in here,'": In the South, particularly in Mississippi, libraries for Blacks often had outdated books or hardly any books at all. On March 27, 1961, in Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, nine students of Tougaloo Southern Christian College walked into the public library designated for white patrons only and sat down. A mob quickly formed outside, and the students were arrested. The "read-in" led by the students who became known as the Tougaloo Nine was the spark that inspired young people across Mississippi to to hold prayer vigils, boycotts and marches against segregation.

"It was like a seed pod explosion": On Oct. 4, 1961, more than 100 students walked out of Burglund High School in McComb, Mississippi, to protest the expulsion of 16-year-old Brenda Travis for participating in civil rights demonstrations. The students and others in the Black community were also angry about the brazen murder days before of civil rights activist Herbert Lee by a white state lawmaker. They wanted an end to racial violence, segregation and barriers to voting. Their activism helped rally young people across Mississippi to challenge Jim Crow.

"Segregation forever": In June 1963, as two newly admitted Black students attempted to register at the all-white University of Alabama, Gov. George Wallace positioned himself in a doorway to block their path. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court had pronounced segregated schools unconstitutional nine years earlier. While Wallace ultimately yielded, he was far from the only politician to stand in the way of civil rights progress in the 1950s and 1960s. Federal, state and local institutions – including law enforcement, educators and the media – played roles in resisting or openly opposing racial justice.

There are more great reads below. Have a great weekend!