PETERSBURG, Va. — Some of the original Freedom Riders from the summer of 1961 arrived to great fanfare in Petersburg on Tuesday morning, returning to a bus station that was once segregated as part of an effort to re-trace their original route.
They got a far different welcome than the one they received six decades ago, when the first group of Freedom Riders boarded buses and headed south to help desegregate bus terminals across the South.
It was a movement that changed the United States.
“I’ve always said that all roads to the Civil Rights Movement has come through Petersburg,” Petersburg mayor Sam Parham said…