TSU's Freedom Riders denied
Expelled civil rights protesters won't get honorary degrees

By JANELL ROSS • Staff Writer • March 29, 2008


Tennessean.

I say the governor should overrule their decision.And a big protest should start ASAP!



Tennessee State University's governing board voted Friday not to grant honorary degrees to students expelled for participating in the civil rights era's now-revered but then controversial Freedom Rides.
The Tennessee Board of Regents denied a waiver that would have granted 13 of the 14 black students expelled from TSU in 1961 the degrees they were denied the chance to earn.



The 7-5 vote — one member abstained — placed Tennessee at odds with at least six Southern schools and school systems that have atoned for politically motivated expulsions.
Regents had concerns about denigrating the value of an honorary degree by awarding so many at one time and recognizing a "one-time act of courage" with what is intended to be a lifetime achievement award.
"There is something sacred about honorary degrees," said Richard Rhoda, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and a nonvoting member of the regents board. "The board, in their judgment, did not feel like this was an instance where you should grant honorary degrees."
Some of the people who advocated for the degrees to be awarded expressed deep disappointment.
"Some of the members of the Board of Regents, both black and white, don't seem to understand," said John Seigenthaler, The Tennessean's chairman emeritus, who in 1961 worked for the U.S. Justice Department.
Seigenthaler was sent South to try to demand that local law enforcement agencies protect the Freedom Riders from assault in the cities where they faced white mobs.
Seigenthaler and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a Freedom Rider, were among dignitaries who wrote to the board in recent months encouraging them to award the degrees. Both men and several students were injured by mobs during the rides.
"The country is better and their standing in the country is better as a result of the sacrifice of these students," Seigenthaler said.
Board spokeswoman Mary Morgan said regents directed TSU to "create and host a major event" honoring the Freedom Riders, and they voted unanimously to create a new honor, the Regent's Medallion, that may later be awarded to the expelled students.
"In no way was it (the vote) a lessening of the award the students deserved," Rhoda said.

Protesters took to the road
The Freedom Rides were orchestrated and often-integrated bus journeys designed to challenge segregation in areas of the sometimes violent deep South unwilling to accept a Supreme Court order calling for the integration of interstate travel facilities.
In 1961, downtown Nashville had already been the scene of mostly student-led sit-in protests. After a group of Freedom Riders from another state were attacked and beaten by a mob, students from several Nashville schools opted to continue the Rides, said Kwame Leo Lillard in a January interview. Lillard was a student at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State University — as TSU then was known — who helped to organize the Nashville riders.
The Nashville students were arrested in Mississippi and, while still in jail, were sent letters advising them that they would face expulsion under terms of a year-old rule created during the administration of Gov. Buford Ellington — a self-described segregationist who later renounced that viewpoint.
Although several black and white Tennessee students identified in newspapers as having participated in civil rights protests were not punished, a TSU committee voted to expel the 14 students who participated in the Freedom Rides.
"I felt, I think this campus feels, as if these students are an inspiration … ," said Melvin N. Johnson, TSU's current president. "Their place in history is tremendous during a very dark period in this nation's history. This was a good time to rectify those wrongs."
Since the 1990s, at least six Southern schools — including Vanderbilt and Fisk universities in Nashville — have denounced their decisions to expel students for participating.
"I am just disappointed that members of the Board of Regents found excuses," Seigenthaler said, " ... and that they would choose to almost mock these students with ceremonies rather than grant them the individual honors they are more than due."
Contact Janell Ross at 726-5982 or jross1@tennessean.com

sad

The excuses that were offered were lame as hell!

A must read!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: THE DREAMER,

We must wear the mask.


http://www.tbr.state.tn.us/board_members/Agenia%20Clark.htm
http://www.tbr.state.tn.us/board_members/Howard%20Roddy.htm

Latest news.


http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008804160415


http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...NEWS04/80415065/1018


Freedom Riders deserve degrees
• What’s this?
To the Editor:
As a freshman in high school, I know how important the rules are to school administrators. For them, they are the things that make the world go round. At Tennessee State University they also have their “rules, policies and procedures.” In fact, they feel bound by these. They must be important. They are, after all, “rules.”
But is following the rules always the right thing to do?


Recently, TSU decided to deny honorary degrees to former Freedom Riders. In the ’60s, the Freedom Riders chose not to conform to the rules of society. They rode buses through the South in a struggle for justice in an unjust society. Board member Howard Roddy is quoted as saying the denial of degrees is about “respecting procedure” and the board of directors states it would be an “action that violates policy” to exceed the two-per-year limit on honorary degrees.

Imagine if the Freedom Riders, along with Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and all the other civil rights heroes, had been unwilling to challenge the rules and status quo of an unreasonable society? How many years did African-Americans have to “respect the procedure” of a racist society until our nation had the courage to change those rules? Legality is not morality.

We haven’t come that far if policies and procedures continue to overshadow what is simply the right thing to do and if rules and the status quo are far more important to consider than individuals and their circumstances. TSU should find the courage to consult their conscience, their heart and their soul instead of their policies, procedures and rules and reconsider their decision.

If they fail to do that, then they have failed to learn the ultimate lessons taught by the Freedom Riders.
Michael Reed, Soddy Daisy 37379

The board had a change of heart.