Four years later, their Supreme Court case secured First Amendment rights for future protesters. 15, when 1,500 Black college students protested the arrests of 23 peers for picketing outside segregated stores the day before. 11 to conduct sit-ins at segregated restaurants.Īnd you'll understand the impact of Dec. You'll learn why hundreds of Black and white college students from across the Northeast flocked to Baltimore and Annapolis on Nov. Their work helped rally young people across the South. Next, you'll join more than 100 students who, on Oct. 4, walked out of Burglund High in Mississippi to protest racial injustice. 31, Black students arrested for using the public library on March 27, and the Freedom Ride of May 14, that ended in a fire on the side of the road. We take you to the scene of Black students arrested while trying to eat at a whites-only lunch counter on Jan. The seats caught fire.Īs the flames spread, Thomas talks about making a choice: Does he die from the smoke filling the bus or at the hands of the Klan?Įxperiencing the 1961 scene in AR today, Henderson started asking himself the same questions, "What would I do? Would I want to just succumb to the smoke or would I want to get the heck off the bus? Then the flaming rag came through the window. He explains what it was like when the bus pulled over for the tire, and the mob surrounded it again: "Many of them had just come from church, good Christian people who brought their children with them to watch the Freedom Riders get killed." "By accident, I became a Freedom Rider," Thomas remembers in a story by Melissa Brown.Įxperience it in augmented reality: A dangerous journey with Freedom Riders on the road to equal rights He was 19 and not planning on going, but his roommate got sick and Thomas took his place. In our AR experience, "A dangerous ride on the road to freedom," Henderson narrates the story with the help of first-person memories from Hank Thomas, who was on that bus 60 years ago. It puts you in the spaces so that you can experience these things for yourself." "So me teaching students about World War II history is different than if I take my students to the Holocaust museum and they get to experience what it was like to be back in those spaces. history teacher, Henderson knows the value of kids experiencing an event, not just reading about it.
He even narrated our new augmented reality experience that allows you to place yourself inside the bus, see the smoke, hear the taunts, feel the terror. But when he first experienced the full AR presentation, "I got unexpectedly emotional."Īs a former seventh grade U.S. Two men blocked the exit, yelling: “Let’s burn them alive. Let’s burn them alive.” USA TODAY visual journalist Jarrad Henderson knew the story.