NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — This weekend brings a celebration of one of the city’s civil rights icons, Jerome Smith.
Smith’s credentials in the civil rights movement are unquestioned, from his membership in the Congress of Racial Equality to being a freedom rider to being arrested over a dozen times to participating in lunch counter demonstrations in the 1960s.
In a conversation a few years ago, Smith told WGNO News what he felt during those tumultuous times: “It’s just human nature to fear, but but my great strength was my consistency and I used to hear to old men on the streets say when I was a boy sing ‘no hum bah’ That’s what I would hear on my first freedom ride. I wasn’t going to bow down. I was going to jail that was already set.”
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David Dennis was also a freedom rider and a member of CORE with Smith and recalls his courage, “I think about courage and I then a little bit of, on the good side insanity to do some of the things Jerome and some of us did. You have to have a little touch of insanity.”…