Remembering those rides

From Oregon-

To see the affable, pink-cheeked Gil Avery at his house on the Oakway Golf Course on a drizzly day in Eugene, it’s hard to imagine him as a young, slim cleric in the heat of Jackson, Miss., in fall 1961 — about to get arrested for the offense of trying to eat lunch with fellow priests, some of whom were black.

But 50 years ago, that’s one of several incidents that formed and shaped Avery, who then spent a career working for the poor as the director of large social service agencies in Boston and Philadelphia, before retiring to Eugene in 1991.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, which is being observed in communities across the United States, explored in a Public Broadcasting Service documentary and recounted by those who participated.

Avery was one of 430 “Freedom Riders” who in 1961 traveled from all corners of the United States to the Deep South to ride with blacks and whites, shoulder-to-shoulder, to challenge segregation laws that were still standing despite having been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times in the previous 13 years.

Avery was a rector at the time at a racially mixed congregation at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Roxbury, Mass. He also belonged to a group of mostly young priests called the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, which was pushing the church to integrate its schools and other institutions in the South.

More here-

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslocalnews/26303432-41/freedom-avery-priests-riders-bus.html.csp