By Lynn Burnett
Born in 1938, freedom rider James Zwerg was raised in Wisconsin. He didn’t have a single Black classmate until he attended college, to study sociology. That first Black classmate, Robert Carter, became a close friend. As James recalls, “I witnessed prejudice against him . . . we’d go to a lunch counter or cafeteria and people would get up and leave the table. I had pledged a particular fraternity and then found out that he was not allowed in the fraternity house. I decided that his friendship was more important than that particular fraternity, so I depledged.”
Robert was from Alabama, where the Montgomery bus boycott had just taken place. He gave James a copy of Martin Luther King’s first book, “Stride Towards Freedom: the Montgomery Story.” James Zwerg was hooked: the book (which talks at length about revolutionary Love) spoke to James as a philosophically minded, devout Christian, who was feeling angry about the treatment of his friend. Watching Robert navigate all-White spaces as a young Black man made James wonder what it would be like for him to navigate all Black spaces. He decided to find out, and in 1961 enrolled at Fisk University. Fisk was a primarily Black university in Nashville, where James Lawson – a Black pastor who had studied nonviolent resistance in India prior to the civil rights movement – was leading some of the nation’s deepest civil rights trainings. At Fisk, James Zwerg befriended John Lewis, who trained with Lawson. Soon, James was training with Lawson as well.
In their nonviolent resistance role-plays, James typically took the role of the angry bigot. His first real-life test was to walk into a movie theatre with a Black man, for which he was knocked unconscious with a monkey wrench. Shortly afterwards, the Congress of Racial Equality launched the first freedom ride. When that bus was firebombed, the Nashville group James was training with launched reinforcement rides. The group was ambushed at a bus stop in Montgomery. James Zwerg was the only White man on board, and volunteered to be the first to exit and face the mob. He recalls stepping off the bus vividly: “In that instant, I had the most incredible religious experience of my life . . . I felt a presence with me. A peace. Calmness. It was just like I was surrounded by kindness, love. I knew in that instance that whether I lived or died, I would be OK.”
Although many of the participants were beaten badly, James Zwerg was given special treatment for being a “traitor to his race”: after being beaten unconscious, freedom rider Lucretia Collins recalls that his body was held up “while white women clawed his face with their nails. And they held up their little children – children who couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old – to claw his face.” After it was over James returned to a state of semi-consciousness and tried to use the handrails to the loading platform to pull himself to his feet. Instead, he was tossed over the railing, landing on his head on the ground below.
At first James was denied medical treatment. When he was finally hospitalized, he lay unconscious in the hospital for two days. Photos of his badly beaten body spread rapidly around the country. When he did wake up, the speech he gave from his hospital bed became a sensation: “Segregation must be stopped. It must be broken down. Those of us on the Freedom Rides will continue…. We’re dedicated to this, we’ll take hitting, we’ll take beating. We’re willing to accept death. But we’re going to keep coming.” He was still barely conscious, and has no recollection of speaking the most famous words of his life.
Shortly afterwards, James Zwerg had a conversation with Martin Luther King that convinced him to enroll in theological seminary. What struck him most about the meeting was not something King said, but King’s incredible presence as a listener… a profound presence that James Zwerg perhaps aspired to. James had three broken vertebrae, which made it difficult to continue in the movement. He went on to become a minister working with rural communities in his home state of Wisconsin, although for decades he was racked with guilt for not continuing with the movement. After finally confessing these feelings to old movement comrades who told him they had nothing but profound gratitude for him, James released the guilt. He retired in 1993, moved to rural New Mexico, and built a cozy A-frame cabin with his wife. According to a USA Today article published in 2013, “Zwerg and his wife Carrie — married 48 years — find peace most days watching wildlife outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. They look out on a pine forest and a red-and-white-striped mesa.”
Additional Resources
Articles
John Blake: Shocking photo created a hero, but not to his family.
Tony Gonzalez: Accidental advocate risked life to fight segregation.
PBS: Interview with James Zwerg.
Wikipedia entry.
Video & Audio
PBS: The Exchange Student: A Short Film from Freedom Riders.
James Zwerg speaking from his hospital bed.
Jonathon Van Maren interviews Freedom Rider James Zwerg.