Freedom Rider Tells His Story In New Book Written By Local Retired Teacher
April 26, 2021 at 10:11 p.m.
Freedom Rider Tells His Story In New Book Written By Local Retired Teacher
By David [email protected]
The memoir – out Tuesday, April 27 from St. Martin’s Press – took hundreds of hours over almost five years to write.
The book is Person’s story told from his perspective. In October 2016, Rooker asked Person if he had ever thought about writing his memoirs as the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides was coming in 2021. Person told Rooker he had, but he wasn’t a writer. Rooker told Person he had always wanted to write a book, but had been busy for the last 35 years, but Rooker proposed the idea to Person that they team up for a book on Person’s life. Person agreed.
“We would have weekly interviews every Tuesday for 4-1/2 years from one to three hours and I’d just keep learning his story. Of course, we’ve been friends for a long time so I already knew his story. So, we’d just go more and more into the details. I would write. I’d come back a week or a couple weeks later – we’d still have conversations every week – but I’d come back and we’d go over what I had written,” Rooker said.
At first, Rooker said it was just “interview, interview, interview” for a long time. Then he started writing, revising many times before Rooker shared what he wrote with Person and Person’s wife, Joetta, along with his own wife, Nancy. The revisions kept coming until everyone was happy with it.
Rooker and Person met because of an EdCom and National History Day project Rooker’s then-eighth-grade son Zach was doing in 2007. Zach was doing a documentary on the Freedom Rides of 1961. Freedom Riders were groups of white and Black civil rights activists who took bus trips in 1961 through the South to protest segregation.
“He wanted to tell the story from the perspective from the principal players in the story. So I told him, to do that, you’re going need to have interviews with Freedom Riders, Kennedy administration people and Ku Klux Klansmen, if you can get them. I told him, you make the contacts, you get them to say yes, and I’ll take you where you need to go to get your interviews. That was really motivating to him. The next week, I was coming home from teaching, he’d be in the house, hanging up the phone, saying, ‘Dad, we’re going to Tucson, Ariz. Dad, we’re going to Atlanta. Dad, we’re going to Nashville,’” Rooker recalled.
Zach got a lot of people to say yes, though some declined.
“So, today, there are only two – with the death of John Lewis last July 17th – original Freedom Riders left,” Rooker said. “There were 13 original Freedom Riders. There were 436 Freedom Riders across the year of 1961 because the 13 got stopped. So there were 13 original Freedom Riders. Today, with the death of John Lewis last July 17th, Charles Person and Hank Thomas are the only two remaining. They both live in Atlanta.”
Zach secured interviews with them in Atlanta for his eighth-grade documentary. Rooker said Charles and Joetta Person invited them into their house. “That was amazing. Total strangers. Invited us in, and we’ve maintained a friendship and a relationship over that. We’ve traveled together to Washington, D.C. They’ve came up to Warsaw. Nancy and I have gone down multiple times to Atlanta, so we’ve developed a really deep and rich relationship over that time,” Rooker said.
In January 2016, nine years after meeting, they brought Person up to Warsaw to be the speaker for the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration luncheon. Later that fall, Rooker asked Person about his memoirs.
During that conversation, Rooker told Person he wanted to go for a New York publisher, even though chances of accomplishing that were slim to none. “We were going to go with slim, and slim came through,” Rooker said.
“It’s been a terrific experience. Really enriching for both of our families. It’s opened up a lot of opportunities for both of us to tell a really amazing and heroic story,” Rooker said.
Rooker knew a lot about the Freedom Rides once his son got into it because he found it to be a riveting story. Rooker read every book he could find on the Freedom Rides.
“So I knew a lot about the Freedom Rides, but I didn’t know much about Charles Person, and so part of our interviews, we’re going over both of our pasts,” Rooker said. “He was a Black kid growing up in the poor section of Atlanta, Buttermilk Bottom. I was a country club kid growing up in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The wealthiest neighborhood in my school district. So that’s really different life experiences for the both of us. We would talk about our childhoods and experiences growing up. They were so different.”
Growing up, Person lived in an upstairs two-room apartment with nine people living there – three adults and six children. There were no bedrooms, just a kitchen and living room. The bathroom was outside upstairs that other people also used. Five people lived in Rooker’s three-story house with a basement and attic when he was growing up – two adults and three children.
“He felt discrimination’s sting over and over. I never felt that,” Rooker said. “Once he was a teenager, he knew he was Black every day of his life. I never thought about being white. Didn’t cross my mind. My dad never had to look in the rearview mirror while we were driving to see who was behind us, to protect his family.”
There’s a part in the book where Person’s family is driving back to Atlanta after dark, which was a rare thing for them to do. “They knew they were being followed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Charles didn’t know that, he was young, he didn’t know what the people in the funny white robes (were). He thought those were church robes. They just weren’t robes they wore at his church. And they ducked off the road and a stranger let them in, in this Black section of town they were in,” Rooker said. They watched a parade of burning crosses drive down the street. Person, seeing the robes and crosses, thought it was a church parade, at that time. The adults were really quiet and serious and Person saw his dad scared for the first time in his life.
“I never experienced anything like that,” Rooker said. “Two different, pretty diverse backgrounds.”
“Buses Are A Comin’” starts with Person’s background in the first half, and then the second half begins on the bus of the Freedom Rides.
Rooker said writing the book was always intense and emotional for him.
“One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is because I’m really interested in the concept of courage. What gives people courage? And these people were unbelievably courageous to get on a bus where they knew people would be waiting for them and trying to stop them and they got on it anyway. Most people wouldn’t do that,” Rooker said.
Person was the youngest Freedom Rider at 18, and one of the least known of the original 13 Freedom Riders, Rooker said.
“To publish his memoir now, and for it to receive the reception that it’s gotten, it’s really amazing,” Rooker said.
Pre-publication, “Buses” has received starred reviews from Publishers’ Weekly, Kirkus and BookPage. Person has been participating in a number of publicity events over the last month, including interviews with NPR and national shows. On May 14-15, there will be events in Alabama marking the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, with Person, Thomas and the Rooker family in attendance.
The book can be purchased online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If anyone is interested in more information or scheduling Rooker for a book talk, contact Rooker via email at [email protected].
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The memoir – out Tuesday, April 27 from St. Martin’s Press – took hundreds of hours over almost five years to write.
The book is Person’s story told from his perspective. In October 2016, Rooker asked Person if he had ever thought about writing his memoirs as the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides was coming in 2021. Person told Rooker he had, but he wasn’t a writer. Rooker told Person he had always wanted to write a book, but had been busy for the last 35 years, but Rooker proposed the idea to Person that they team up for a book on Person’s life. Person agreed.
“We would have weekly interviews every Tuesday for 4-1/2 years from one to three hours and I’d just keep learning his story. Of course, we’ve been friends for a long time so I already knew his story. So, we’d just go more and more into the details. I would write. I’d come back a week or a couple weeks later – we’d still have conversations every week – but I’d come back and we’d go over what I had written,” Rooker said.
At first, Rooker said it was just “interview, interview, interview” for a long time. Then he started writing, revising many times before Rooker shared what he wrote with Person and Person’s wife, Joetta, along with his own wife, Nancy. The revisions kept coming until everyone was happy with it.
Rooker and Person met because of an EdCom and National History Day project Rooker’s then-eighth-grade son Zach was doing in 2007. Zach was doing a documentary on the Freedom Rides of 1961. Freedom Riders were groups of white and Black civil rights activists who took bus trips in 1961 through the South to protest segregation.
“He wanted to tell the story from the perspective from the principal players in the story. So I told him, to do that, you’re going need to have interviews with Freedom Riders, Kennedy administration people and Ku Klux Klansmen, if you can get them. I told him, you make the contacts, you get them to say yes, and I’ll take you where you need to go to get your interviews. That was really motivating to him. The next week, I was coming home from teaching, he’d be in the house, hanging up the phone, saying, ‘Dad, we’re going to Tucson, Ariz. Dad, we’re going to Atlanta. Dad, we’re going to Nashville,’” Rooker recalled.
Zach got a lot of people to say yes, though some declined.
“So, today, there are only two – with the death of John Lewis last July 17th – original Freedom Riders left,” Rooker said. “There were 13 original Freedom Riders. There were 436 Freedom Riders across the year of 1961 because the 13 got stopped. So there were 13 original Freedom Riders. Today, with the death of John Lewis last July 17th, Charles Person and Hank Thomas are the only two remaining. They both live in Atlanta.”
Zach secured interviews with them in Atlanta for his eighth-grade documentary. Rooker said Charles and Joetta Person invited them into their house. “That was amazing. Total strangers. Invited us in, and we’ve maintained a friendship and a relationship over that. We’ve traveled together to Washington, D.C. They’ve came up to Warsaw. Nancy and I have gone down multiple times to Atlanta, so we’ve developed a really deep and rich relationship over that time,” Rooker said.
In January 2016, nine years after meeting, they brought Person up to Warsaw to be the speaker for the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration luncheon. Later that fall, Rooker asked Person about his memoirs.
During that conversation, Rooker told Person he wanted to go for a New York publisher, even though chances of accomplishing that were slim to none. “We were going to go with slim, and slim came through,” Rooker said.
“It’s been a terrific experience. Really enriching for both of our families. It’s opened up a lot of opportunities for both of us to tell a really amazing and heroic story,” Rooker said.
Rooker knew a lot about the Freedom Rides once his son got into it because he found it to be a riveting story. Rooker read every book he could find on the Freedom Rides.
“So I knew a lot about the Freedom Rides, but I didn’t know much about Charles Person, and so part of our interviews, we’re going over both of our pasts,” Rooker said. “He was a Black kid growing up in the poor section of Atlanta, Buttermilk Bottom. I was a country club kid growing up in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The wealthiest neighborhood in my school district. So that’s really different life experiences for the both of us. We would talk about our childhoods and experiences growing up. They were so different.”
Growing up, Person lived in an upstairs two-room apartment with nine people living there – three adults and six children. There were no bedrooms, just a kitchen and living room. The bathroom was outside upstairs that other people also used. Five people lived in Rooker’s three-story house with a basement and attic when he was growing up – two adults and three children.
“He felt discrimination’s sting over and over. I never felt that,” Rooker said. “Once he was a teenager, he knew he was Black every day of his life. I never thought about being white. Didn’t cross my mind. My dad never had to look in the rearview mirror while we were driving to see who was behind us, to protect his family.”
There’s a part in the book where Person’s family is driving back to Atlanta after dark, which was a rare thing for them to do. “They knew they were being followed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Charles didn’t know that, he was young, he didn’t know what the people in the funny white robes (were). He thought those were church robes. They just weren’t robes they wore at his church. And they ducked off the road and a stranger let them in, in this Black section of town they were in,” Rooker said. They watched a parade of burning crosses drive down the street. Person, seeing the robes and crosses, thought it was a church parade, at that time. The adults were really quiet and serious and Person saw his dad scared for the first time in his life.
“I never experienced anything like that,” Rooker said. “Two different, pretty diverse backgrounds.”
“Buses Are A Comin’” starts with Person’s background in the first half, and then the second half begins on the bus of the Freedom Rides.
Rooker said writing the book was always intense and emotional for him.
“One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is because I’m really interested in the concept of courage. What gives people courage? And these people were unbelievably courageous to get on a bus where they knew people would be waiting for them and trying to stop them and they got on it anyway. Most people wouldn’t do that,” Rooker said.
Person was the youngest Freedom Rider at 18, and one of the least known of the original 13 Freedom Riders, Rooker said.
“To publish his memoir now, and for it to receive the reception that it’s gotten, it’s really amazing,” Rooker said.
Pre-publication, “Buses” has received starred reviews from Publishers’ Weekly, Kirkus and BookPage. Person has been participating in a number of publicity events over the last month, including interviews with NPR and national shows. On May 14-15, there will be events in Alabama marking the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, with Person, Thomas and the Rooker family in attendance.
The book can be purchased online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If anyone is interested in more information or scheduling Rooker for a book talk, contact Rooker via email at [email protected].
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