Pam Blankenheim will lead the discussion of the thirteen original Freedom Riders. One of them was Pam’s husband, Ed Blankenheim, who traveled from Washington, D.C. to the deep South in hopes of sitting blacks and whites together to challenge the Jim Crow laws that were active in the South despite UCC rulings that desegregated interstate travel.

The bus Pam’s husband was on was firebombed. These thirteen Freedom Riders barely escaped with their lives. Ed was a young Marine in North Carolina, where he witnessed segregation and racism.