Community members gathered at the Historic Douglass High School in Leesburg on Monday to raise the Juneteenth flag and reflect on the impact of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights movement.
The ceremony included remarks by Hazekiah Watkins, who became the youngest Freedom Rider following his arrest at age 13 during a protest at a Jackson, MS, bus station. He was released after 13 days in jail, thanks to the intervention of the Kennedy administration, but he was not spared his mother’s rod when he returned home.
In the ensuing years as a Freedom Rider fighting to enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling banning segregated buses, he was arrested more than 100 times…