Wednesday, May 18, 2011 1:34:04 AM
Shocking photo created a hero, but not to his family
James Zwerg's physical wounds healed after he was attacked by an Alabama mob, but the emotional wounds festered.
By John Blake, CNN
May 16, 2011
The mob was already waiting for James Zwerg by the time the Greyhound bus eased into the station in Montgomery, Alabama.
Looking out the window, Zwerg could see men gripping baseball bats, chains and clubs. They had sealed off the streets leading to the bus station and chased away news photographers. They didn't want anyone to witness what they were about to do.
Zwerg accepted his worst fear: He was going to die today.
Only the night before, Zwerg had prayed for the strength to not strike back in anger. He was among the 18 white and black college students from Nashville who had decided to take the bus trip through the segregated South in 1961. They called themselves Freedom Riders. Their goal was to desegregate public transportation.
Zwerg had not planned to go, but the night before, some students had asked him to join them. To summon his courage, Zwerg stayed up late, reading Psalm 27, the scripture that the students had picked to read during a group prayer before their trip.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation, of whom shall I fear?" the Psalm began. But there was another passage at the end that touched Zwerg in a place the other students didn't know about: "Though my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me."
Zwerg's parents had forsaken him for joining the civil rights movement. That same night, he had written a letter that was to be handed to them in case he was killed. It explained his decision to join the Freedom Riders.
Zwerg called his mother to tell her where he was going.
"Don't go. Don't go," she said. "You can't do this to your father."
"I have no choice. I have to," he said.
"You killed your father," his mother replied. Then she hung up.
The Greyhound bus doors hissed open. Zwerg had volunteered to go first. The mob swarmed him as he stepped off the bus, yelling, "Nigger lover! Nigger lover!"
Then, as the mob grabbed him, Zwerg closed his eyes and bowed his head to pray. "The Lord is my light and salvation, of whom shall I fear ... "
The mob dragged him away.
Zwerg tells the story behind the photo
What happened next would furnish the civil rights movement with one of its most unforgettable images. Photographers eventually broke through and snapped pictures of what the mob had done to Zwerg and another Freedom Rider, John Lewis. The pictures were broadcast around the world.
Zwerg looked like a bloody scarecrow. His eyes were blackened and his suit was splattered with blood. After he was hospitalized, a news crew filmed him in his hospital bed. Barely able to speak, Zwerg declared that violence wouldn't stop him or any of his friends. The Freedom Rides would go on.
Zwerg became one of the movement's first heroes. Although his physical wounds healed, the emotional ones took longer. He was wracked with guilt and depression after the beating. He drank too much, contemplated suicide, and finally had to seek therapy.
He was drawn to the Freedom Rides after he was assigned a black roommate while attending Beloit College in Wisconsin. He grew to admire his roommate and was shocked to see how the young man was treated by whites when they went out in public together. So he volunteered to be an exchange student at Fisk University in Nashville, an all-black college, for one semester. He wanted to know how it felt to be a minority.
Zwerg had gone to a city that had become a launching pad for the civil rights movement. He was swept up in the group of Nashville college students who were initiating sit-ins and Freedom Rides. He was awed by their commitment.
Zwerg's parents were unaware of the changes taking place in their son. They were enraged when they opened their local newspaper the day after he was attacked and saw the now-famous picture of their battered son on the front page.
Zwerg later tried to explain to them that what he did as a Freedom Rider was an outgrowth of what they had taught him, but they remained angry. "These are the two people who instilled my Christian beliefs, my ethics," he says, "and now they were saying, this time when I lived my faith to the fullest, they didn't accept it."
Zwerg would try to talk to his father about his decision, but they could never finish the conversation.
"He'd blow up. He'd say, 'I don't want to talk about it.' One time, he used the n-word. He said, 'Those damn niggers used you.' "
Zwerg's anguish was compounded by his father's weak heart. He suffered a heart attack after he learned his son was attacked by a mob, and his mother had a nervous breakdown. "I had a tremendous amount of guilt," he says.
Even as the years passed and he was featured in documentaries and history books, Zwerg's parents never gave their approval. They simply stopped discussing that part of his life.
The closest he got to some sort of reconciliation was a conversation with his mother. She told him that her concern was for his dad. "She said, 'You'll never know the shock. We knew you were doing something, but we learned what happened to you from seeing your picture on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal. Until you have a child of your own, you'll never understand.' "
The iconic photo eats away at Zwerg's life
His parents' rejection erased the closeness Zwerg once felt with them. "I had a lot of anger toward them," he says. "How can they treat me this way? This was the most meaningful period of my life. How could they not understand that?"
Zwerg took out his anger on himself and on others. After the beating, he returned to college but had trouble being close to anyone. "The two people I loved the most hurt me, so, by God, I wasn't going to love anybody," Zwerg says. "I might meet a girl who I felt was special. One minute, I'd tell her that I loved her, and the next, I told her I didn't want to see her again."
Zwerg began to drink heavily during his senior year, and at one time he contemplated suicide. Depressed, he put on his jacket and walked to a pier near campus.
He still doesn't remember what happened next. "I remember going out to the pier, but I do not remember coming back," he says. "I awoke the next day in my room, and when I put on my jacket, a straight-edge razor was in a pocket. I didn't remember putting it there."
Though the aftermath of the beating caused Zwerg much emotional pain, the attack also led to one of his most profound religious experiences. He felt something during the mob attack that he still struggles to describe.
After he stepped off the bus, Zwerg says, the crowd grabbed him.
In "Parting the Waters," Taylor Branch wrote that the mob had swelled to 3,000 people and described what happened to Zwerg: "One of the men grabbed Zwerg's suitcase and smashed him in the face with it. Others slugged him to the ground, and when he was dazed beyond resistance, one man pinned Zwerg's head between his knees so that the others could take turns hitting him.'"
Yet in the midst of that savagery, Zwerg says he had the most beautiful experience in his life. "I bowed my head," he says. "I asked God to give me the strength to remain nonviolent and to forgive the people for what they might do. It was very brief, but in that instant, I felt an overwhelming presence. I don't know how else to describe it. A peace came over me. I knew that no matter what happened to me, it was going to be OK. Whether I lived or whether I died, I felt this incredible calm."
Zwerg blacked out and didn't wake up until he was in a car. The mob had continued to beat him after he was unconscious. Being unconscious saved his life, he believes now. His body was relaxed, so it took the punishment better than if he had stiffened up to protect himself. Incredibly, no Freedom Riders were killed during the mob attack.
Even after he was taken to a nearby hospital, Zwerg learned later, he was not safe. "A nurse said she drugged me the first night because there was a mob coming within a block of the hospital to lynch me," he says. "She didn't want me to be aware of anything if they got me."
Zwerg was in such shock, he doesn't remember the news crew that did make it to his hospital room. In a scene that was played in the "Eyes on the Prize" documentary, a battered Zwerg told the American public that the Freedom Rides would go on. "We will continue our journey, one way or another. We are prepared to die."
He doesn't even remember talking to anyone from his hospital bed.
Zwerg's teeth were fractured and several of his vertebrae were cracked, but he recovered. He also took steps to recover emotionally. He was torn between rejoining the Freedom Riders and attending seminary.
Then, as he was being honored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for his courage, he talked to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. about his career indecision. "He said, 'Jim, go to seminary. You'll touch a lot more lives through pastoring,' " Zwerg recalls. "Basically, that made up my mind for me."
Freedom Riders struggle on a new journey
When he entered seminary, Zwerg decided to go through six months of therapy to release the anger and guilt he felt toward his parents. He also thought about a woman he had shunned during his angry college days. "I worked a lot of this through, which made me feel much better," he says. "When I finished, I knew I wanted to see my lady again. So, I called her up that night, asked her out, and asked her to marry me."
That woman, Carolyn, said yes. They live together today in Tucson, Arizona.
Zwerg entered the ministry after the beating. But he left in 1975, dejected by the politics of his job.
At various times, he was a chamber of commerce lobbyist, an IBM manager, and a business manager at a hospice. He worked for a ministry that put people into low-cost housing. He retired in 1999.
He never found the bond he experienced with the other Freedom Riders. "Each of us was stronger because of those we were with," he says. "If I was being beaten, I knew I wasn't alone. I could endure more because I knew everybody there was giving me their strength. Even as someone else was being beaten, I would give them my strength."
Though he became a pastor, Zwerg says his most profound exposure to faith came as a Freedom Rider. "I never felt so alive theologically," he says. "My prayer life was never so meaningful. My whole awareness of the power of love when I heard King say in his last utterance, 'I've been to the mountaintop, and I've seen the Promised Land.' I know those of us who were in the movement can say we were there, too."
But coming down from the mountaintop, after the movement, was deflating, Zwerg says. He couldn't find that bond again. "It's a tremendous downer. You look for it everywhere. I've never experienced it since. The closest thing I've experienced to it is the love of my wife."
Many of his colleagues had the same struggles. Some couldn't keep jobs because they couldn't handle authority. One stepped in front of a bus and killed himself. Another drank himself to death. Many experienced some type of post-traumatic stress.
Zwerg questions his place in history
Zwerg says he still gets choked up about that morning in the Alabama bus station. When I ask what he feels today when he sees that photo of himself, he grows quiet.
Then he tells a story.
He says he attended a reunion at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Museum in Alabama. During a ceremony, Zwerg was walking with a crowd of Freedom Rider colleagues when he saw the famous pictures of his battered face in a video and displayed on the museum wall.
"I looked at it, and what it brings back to me more than anything else is that I got so much notoriety because I was white," he says. "I looked at that picture and I thought of all the people that never get their names in a book, never get interviewed but literally had given their lives. Who the hell am I to have my picture up there?"
He was suddenly flooded with guilt. He started bawling during the ceremony as startled people looked on. Then another Freedom Rider veteran, a strapping black man named Jim Davis, walked over to Zwerg.
Zwerg's voice trembles with emotion as he recalls what Davis said. "He said, 'Jim, you don't realize that it was your words from that hospital bed that were the call to arms for the rest of us.' "
And then, as Davis wrapped his big arms around Zwerg in front of the startled crowd, the two men cried together.
*
Related Articles
John Lewis: 'I thought I was going to die'
May 10, 2001
http://articles.cnn.com/2001-05-10/us/access.lewis.freedom.rides_1_white-men-angry-mob-blacks?_s=PM:US
Freedom Riders find 'an altogether different world'
May 12, 2001
http://articles.cnn.com/2001-05-12/us/freedom.riders_1_freedom-riders-bus-station-birmingham-and-montgomery?_s=PM:US
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© 2011 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-16/us/Zwerg.freedom.rides_1_greyhound-bus-bus-station-bus-trip?_s=PM:US
===
James Zwerg Recalls His Freedom Ride
Published in Beloit Magazine/Winter-Spring 1989
By Ann Bausum, '79
Many of his Beloit classmates will remember James Zwerg, '62, and his highly visible role in the Freedom Rides of 1961. His part in this volatile time in American history was brought to our attention for the first time, however, by Taylor Branch's new Pulitzer Prize-winning history Parting the Waters. Branch's account of the Freedom Rides, which sought to test federal rulings that interstate bus passengers could not be segregated in transit or in waiting rooms, is a vivid reminder of just how much has changed in the 28 years since those rides and how much courage it took to participate in them. We decided to follow up with Zwerg and relive those days with the perspective of passing time. -- Editor
First things first. "I'm no hero when compared to the other students and what they did," insists James Zwerg, '62.
Humility and modesty run deep in Zwerg, whose first career was 10 years of service as a minister and who is now a manager with IBM in Tucson.
Zwerg, originally from Appleton, Wis., went to the South during his junior year at Beloit College when he signed on for an exchange semester at the predominately black Fisk University in Nashville. His interest in attending a black institution developed through his friendship with Robert Carter, '62, his freshman roommate and one of a handful of black students at Beloit in the late 1950s.
Zwerg, a sociology major who already had an interest in the ministry, was astonished at selected incidents of racism that he experienced through Carter at Beloit. Some fraternities refused to take black members, for instance, prompting Zwerg to de-pledge from his house and join the integrated Beta Theta Pi. He decided he wanted to experience life as a minority and chose Fisk as his setting.
At Fisk, Zwerg was soon drawn to the Civil Rights movement and met John Lewis, a Fisk student who would also take part in the Freedom Rides. Lewis, now a U.S. congressman from Atlanta, was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a student-organized Civil Rights activist group. "I had never before encountered someone my age with such commitment," recalls Zwerg.
Soon Zwerg was helping with civil disobedience workshops as an "antagonist," testing future demonstrators with the types of verbal abuse that could be expected on site. "All my childhood I had a pretty short temper," Zwerg admits. "I couldn't imagine being as calm as these people were able to be."
So, when Zwerg was invited to "join the other side," he was reluctant for fear of being unable to restrain himself when tested with physical and verbal abuse. Still, he was discovering the unexpected power that can form in a group when its sum is greater than its parts.
Zwerg decided to give it a try. His first demonstration was at a "whites only" movie house. Zwerg bought two movie-tickets, then handed one to an accompanying black man. When they tried to enter the theatre, Zwerg was hit with a monkey wrench, knocked out cold and dragged to the edge of the sidewalk.
So began his efforts on behalf of Civil Rights. Zwerg participated in subsequent integration efforts at movie theatres and at lunch counters, and, when invited to become a member of SNCC, he joined.
The first Freedom Ride was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and departed from Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961. Thirteen riders were split between two busses with New Orleans as their destination. They traveled in integrated seating and patronized "whites only" snack counters without major incident until arriving at Aniston, Ala., where the first bus to arrive was attacked by a waiting mob.
The bus retreated to the highway, pursued by mob members, and broke down on the road from damage done at the station. It was ultimately set afire, and Freedom Riders were beaten as they escaped the flaming vehicle. Pictures of the bus appeared internationally and focused worldwide attention on the riders.
The second bus to arrive at Anniston was ultimately boarded by whites who beat up four Freedom Riders, two whites and two blacks, before the bus continued its journey to Birmingham still carrying the beaten riders and their attackers. It was welcomed at Birmingham by an angry mob of Ku Klax Klan members who had negotiated 15 minutes of violence without police intervention from sympathetic authorities. Freedom Riders were badly beaten and, once reunited with those from the first bus, ultimately fled Birmingham by airplane under tight security.
John Lewis, who had participated in the first Freedom Ride as far as South Carolina, gathered with Zwerg and other SNCC members in Nashville to discuss what should be done. They agreed that the ride could not be allowed to stop and they should try and continue it from Birmingham. Volunteers were sought, and among those chosen to go was James Zwerg, the only white male. Accompanying him were two white females and nine black men and women.
The volunteers realized their mission was extremely dangerous. Zwerg recalls writing his parents a letter that indicated he would probably be dead by the time they received it. Yet he also recalls that there was never a question in his mind of whether or not he should go.
"My faith was never so strong as during that time," he says. "I knew I was doing what I should be doing."
The group traveled by regular bus toward Birmingham without incident until it reached the Birmingham city limits where Zwerg and his black seating companion were arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus. The bus, with the remaining Freedom Riders still aboard, was escorted into Birmingham where police first harassed the participants on the bus and then found themselves in the awkward position of having to defend them from the hostile mob in the station. Ultimately there were put under "protective custody"; the blacks were eventually driven to the Tennessee border and dropped off.
Within three days of their original departure from Nashville, most of the group were reunited, including Zwerg. The group agreed to attempt to continue the ride by traveling to Montgomery along with additional student volunteers from Nashville. Their original bus was cancelled, so prospective passengers waited through the night at the Birmingham bus terminal under police protection from a mob that had swelled to 3,000.
After further delays, the trip proceeded under incredible security, including aircraft protection, that had been arranged for at the insistence of the federal government. However, escorting forces were forbidden to cross the Montgomery city line, and the bus pulled into a terminal that was eerie in its stillness.
In Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch records the chilling details of the violence that followed when several hundred rioters were permitted to range freely for ten minutes before police arrived to restore order. The Freedom Riders were variously thrown over the terminal ramp wall onto parked cars below, pelted with their luggage, dragged from taxis where they sought escape, and held down and beaten unconscious by groups of men and women who used bats, pipes, handbags and fists while crowds cheered them on.
James Zwerg's post-riot photographs, which were published nationwide in Time, LIFE and Associated Press newspapers, recorded the results of his brutal beating.
Branch writes: "One of the men grabbed Zwerg's suitcase and smashed him in the face with it. Others slugged him to the ground, and when he was dazed beyond resistance, one man pinned Zwerg's head between his knees so that the others could take turns hitting him. As they steadily knocked out his teeth, and his face and chest were streaming blood, a few adults on the perimeter put their children on their shouldesr to view the carnage. A small girl asked what the men were doing, and her father replied, 'Well, they're really carrying on.'"
The violence, amazingly, resulted in no deaths. Innocent blacks near the terminal were also beaten. So were journalists on hand to document the arrival and John Seigenthaler, aide to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who had been sent South to assist the travelers.
Zwerg was denied prompt medical attention at the end of the riot on the pretext that no white ambulances were available for transport. He remained unconscious in a Montgomery hospital for two-and-a-half days after the beating and stayed hospitalized for a total of five days. Only later did doctors diagnose that his injuries included a broken back.
Zwerg, whose religious faith had been considerably strengthened by earlier Civil Rights efforts, recalls that his beating was preceded by "an incredible religious experience." Upon asking God for the strength not to fight back, Zwerg describes feeling "a peace that I've never experienced again in my life.
There was noting particularly heroic in what I did," Zwerg concludes modestly at the end of his story. Then he adds: "If you want to talk about heroism, consider the black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said 'Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital. I don't know if he lived or died.
"Now that was heroic. I'd been trained. I knew what I was getting into. I didn't just come in off the street and give my life for another human being like he might have. I didn't do anything that hundreds of others weren't doing."
Even the incredible violence of Montgomery did not bring the Freedom Ride to an end, although the effort never drew as much attention - or violence - again. Subsequent trips led to systematic jailing of riders as supposed violators of state laws that tied up the movement's momentum in a tangle of state and federal maneuvering.
When news of Zwerg's efforts reached Beloit College, students and faculty responded by drafting resolutions of support for his participation. Copies were circulated on campus and sent to the president of the United States and the governor of Alabama, among others.
Zwerg's experience deepened his commitment to religion, which led him to Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill., and service as a minister in the United Church of Christ. He cites the Reverend Martin Luther King with helping him decide to enter the ministry during a half-hour meeting together when Zwerg was honored in 1961 with a "Freedom Award" by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Even though Zwerg ultimately changed his career, he comments that "the ministry will never be out of me entirely."
His experience also left Zwerg with an unswerving commitment to non-violence. "I couldn't have served in the military after that," notes Zwerg, for example.
Zwerg's parents had difficulty understanding their son's dedication to the cause of Civil Rights, and according to Zwerg, it took years to heal their relationship with him.
The father of three children, Zwerg believes that "if my son or daughter had that commitment, I'd say 'God Bless.'" He adds, though, "I would worry. It would be tough."
Zwerg was reunited with Lewis and another Civil Rights friend several years ago while on a business trip to Atlanta. He was brought up to date on many others by viewing the Public Broadcasting System's Civil Rights documentary, "Eyes on the Prize," which he praises for its accuracy and impact.
Zwerg revisited Montgomery on the 25th anniversary of the Freedom Rides to take part in a Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary on them. At one point during filming, Zwerg was riding a bus into Montgomery. Although the film crew did not notice it, Zwerg was immediately struck by the fact that the driver of the bus was black and the passenger directly behind him was a young black man. Zwerg started a conversation with the black passenger and learned that he had never heard of the Freedom Riders or their reception in Montgomery.
"Here was a young 16-year-old riding to Montgomery without a thought in his head about the Freedom Rides. Riding that bus was the most natural thing in the world for him to do." Zwerg asks rhetorically: "Did we accomplish something with our rides? You bet we did!"
Copyright 1989 Beloit College
http://www.beloit.edu/archives/documents/archival_documents/james_zwerg_freedom_ride/
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James Zwerg's physical wounds healed after he was attacked by an Alabama mob, but the emotional wounds festered.
By John Blake, CNN
May 16, 2011
The mob was already waiting for James Zwerg by the time the Greyhound bus eased into the station in Montgomery, Alabama.
Looking out the window, Zwerg could see men gripping baseball bats, chains and clubs. They had sealed off the streets leading to the bus station and chased away news photographers. They didn't want anyone to witness what they were about to do.
Zwerg accepted his worst fear: He was going to die today.
Only the night before, Zwerg had prayed for the strength to not strike back in anger. He was among the 18 white and black college students from Nashville who had decided to take the bus trip through the segregated South in 1961. They called themselves Freedom Riders. Their goal was to desegregate public transportation.
Zwerg had not planned to go, but the night before, some students had asked him to join them. To summon his courage, Zwerg stayed up late, reading Psalm 27, the scripture that the students had picked to read during a group prayer before their trip.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation, of whom shall I fear?" the Psalm began. But there was another passage at the end that touched Zwerg in a place the other students didn't know about: "Though my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me."
Zwerg's parents had forsaken him for joining the civil rights movement. That same night, he had written a letter that was to be handed to them in case he was killed. It explained his decision to join the Freedom Riders.
Zwerg called his mother to tell her where he was going.
"Don't go. Don't go," she said. "You can't do this to your father."
"I have no choice. I have to," he said.
"You killed your father," his mother replied. Then she hung up.
The Greyhound bus doors hissed open. Zwerg had volunteered to go first. The mob swarmed him as he stepped off the bus, yelling, "Nigger lover! Nigger lover!"
Then, as the mob grabbed him, Zwerg closed his eyes and bowed his head to pray. "The Lord is my light and salvation, of whom shall I fear ... "
The mob dragged him away.
Zwerg tells the story behind the photo
What happened next would furnish the civil rights movement with one of its most unforgettable images. Photographers eventually broke through and snapped pictures of what the mob had done to Zwerg and another Freedom Rider, John Lewis. The pictures were broadcast around the world.
Zwerg looked like a bloody scarecrow. His eyes were blackened and his suit was splattered with blood. After he was hospitalized, a news crew filmed him in his hospital bed. Barely able to speak, Zwerg declared that violence wouldn't stop him or any of his friends. The Freedom Rides would go on.
Zwerg became one of the movement's first heroes. Although his physical wounds healed, the emotional ones took longer. He was wracked with guilt and depression after the beating. He drank too much, contemplated suicide, and finally had to seek therapy.
He was drawn to the Freedom Rides after he was assigned a black roommate while attending Beloit College in Wisconsin. He grew to admire his roommate and was shocked to see how the young man was treated by whites when they went out in public together. So he volunteered to be an exchange student at Fisk University in Nashville, an all-black college, for one semester. He wanted to know how it felt to be a minority.
Zwerg had gone to a city that had become a launching pad for the civil rights movement. He was swept up in the group of Nashville college students who were initiating sit-ins and Freedom Rides. He was awed by their commitment.
Zwerg's parents were unaware of the changes taking place in their son. They were enraged when they opened their local newspaper the day after he was attacked and saw the now-famous picture of their battered son on the front page.
Zwerg later tried to explain to them that what he did as a Freedom Rider was an outgrowth of what they had taught him, but they remained angry. "These are the two people who instilled my Christian beliefs, my ethics," he says, "and now they were saying, this time when I lived my faith to the fullest, they didn't accept it."
Zwerg would try to talk to his father about his decision, but they could never finish the conversation.
"He'd blow up. He'd say, 'I don't want to talk about it.' One time, he used the n-word. He said, 'Those damn niggers used you.' "
Zwerg's anguish was compounded by his father's weak heart. He suffered a heart attack after he learned his son was attacked by a mob, and his mother had a nervous breakdown. "I had a tremendous amount of guilt," he says.
Even as the years passed and he was featured in documentaries and history books, Zwerg's parents never gave their approval. They simply stopped discussing that part of his life.
The closest he got to some sort of reconciliation was a conversation with his mother. She told him that her concern was for his dad. "She said, 'You'll never know the shock. We knew you were doing something, but we learned what happened to you from seeing your picture on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal. Until you have a child of your own, you'll never understand.' "
The iconic photo eats away at Zwerg's life
His parents' rejection erased the closeness Zwerg once felt with them. "I had a lot of anger toward them," he says. "How can they treat me this way? This was the most meaningful period of my life. How could they not understand that?"
Zwerg took out his anger on himself and on others. After the beating, he returned to college but had trouble being close to anyone. "The two people I loved the most hurt me, so, by God, I wasn't going to love anybody," Zwerg says. "I might meet a girl who I felt was special. One minute, I'd tell her that I loved her, and the next, I told her I didn't want to see her again."
Zwerg began to drink heavily during his senior year, and at one time he contemplated suicide. Depressed, he put on his jacket and walked to a pier near campus.
He still doesn't remember what happened next. "I remember going out to the pier, but I do not remember coming back," he says. "I awoke the next day in my room, and when I put on my jacket, a straight-edge razor was in a pocket. I didn't remember putting it there."
Though the aftermath of the beating caused Zwerg much emotional pain, the attack also led to one of his most profound religious experiences. He felt something during the mob attack that he still struggles to describe.
After he stepped off the bus, Zwerg says, the crowd grabbed him.
In "Parting the Waters," Taylor Branch wrote that the mob had swelled to 3,000 people and described what happened to Zwerg: "One of the men grabbed Zwerg's suitcase and smashed him in the face with it. Others slugged him to the ground, and when he was dazed beyond resistance, one man pinned Zwerg's head between his knees so that the others could take turns hitting him.'"
Yet in the midst of that savagery, Zwerg says he had the most beautiful experience in his life. "I bowed my head," he says. "I asked God to give me the strength to remain nonviolent and to forgive the people for what they might do. It was very brief, but in that instant, I felt an overwhelming presence. I don't know how else to describe it. A peace came over me. I knew that no matter what happened to me, it was going to be OK. Whether I lived or whether I died, I felt this incredible calm."
Zwerg blacked out and didn't wake up until he was in a car. The mob had continued to beat him after he was unconscious. Being unconscious saved his life, he believes now. His body was relaxed, so it took the punishment better than if he had stiffened up to protect himself. Incredibly, no Freedom Riders were killed during the mob attack.
Even after he was taken to a nearby hospital, Zwerg learned later, he was not safe. "A nurse said she drugged me the first night because there was a mob coming within a block of the hospital to lynch me," he says. "She didn't want me to be aware of anything if they got me."
Zwerg was in such shock, he doesn't remember the news crew that did make it to his hospital room. In a scene that was played in the "Eyes on the Prize" documentary, a battered Zwerg told the American public that the Freedom Rides would go on. "We will continue our journey, one way or another. We are prepared to die."
He doesn't even remember talking to anyone from his hospital bed.
Zwerg's teeth were fractured and several of his vertebrae were cracked, but he recovered. He also took steps to recover emotionally. He was torn between rejoining the Freedom Riders and attending seminary.
Then, as he was being honored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for his courage, he talked to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. about his career indecision. "He said, 'Jim, go to seminary. You'll touch a lot more lives through pastoring,' " Zwerg recalls. "Basically, that made up my mind for me."
Freedom Riders struggle on a new journey
When he entered seminary, Zwerg decided to go through six months of therapy to release the anger and guilt he felt toward his parents. He also thought about a woman he had shunned during his angry college days. "I worked a lot of this through, which made me feel much better," he says. "When I finished, I knew I wanted to see my lady again. So, I called her up that night, asked her out, and asked her to marry me."
That woman, Carolyn, said yes. They live together today in Tucson, Arizona.
Zwerg entered the ministry after the beating. But he left in 1975, dejected by the politics of his job.
At various times, he was a chamber of commerce lobbyist, an IBM manager, and a business manager at a hospice. He worked for a ministry that put people into low-cost housing. He retired in 1999.
He never found the bond he experienced with the other Freedom Riders. "Each of us was stronger because of those we were with," he says. "If I was being beaten, I knew I wasn't alone. I could endure more because I knew everybody there was giving me their strength. Even as someone else was being beaten, I would give them my strength."
Though he became a pastor, Zwerg says his most profound exposure to faith came as a Freedom Rider. "I never felt so alive theologically," he says. "My prayer life was never so meaningful. My whole awareness of the power of love when I heard King say in his last utterance, 'I've been to the mountaintop, and I've seen the Promised Land.' I know those of us who were in the movement can say we were there, too."
But coming down from the mountaintop, after the movement, was deflating, Zwerg says. He couldn't find that bond again. "It's a tremendous downer. You look for it everywhere. I've never experienced it since. The closest thing I've experienced to it is the love of my wife."
Many of his colleagues had the same struggles. Some couldn't keep jobs because they couldn't handle authority. One stepped in front of a bus and killed himself. Another drank himself to death. Many experienced some type of post-traumatic stress.
Zwerg questions his place in history
Zwerg says he still gets choked up about that morning in the Alabama bus station. When I ask what he feels today when he sees that photo of himself, he grows quiet.
Then he tells a story.
He says he attended a reunion at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Museum in Alabama. During a ceremony, Zwerg was walking with a crowd of Freedom Rider colleagues when he saw the famous pictures of his battered face in a video and displayed on the museum wall.
"I looked at it, and what it brings back to me more than anything else is that I got so much notoriety because I was white," he says. "I looked at that picture and I thought of all the people that never get their names in a book, never get interviewed but literally had given their lives. Who the hell am I to have my picture up there?"
He was suddenly flooded with guilt. He started bawling during the ceremony as startled people looked on. Then another Freedom Rider veteran, a strapping black man named Jim Davis, walked over to Zwerg.
Zwerg's voice trembles with emotion as he recalls what Davis said. "He said, 'Jim, you don't realize that it was your words from that hospital bed that were the call to arms for the rest of us.' "
And then, as Davis wrapped his big arms around Zwerg in front of the startled crowd, the two men cried together.
*
Related Articles
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Freedom Riders find 'an altogether different world'
May 12, 2001
http://articles.cnn.com/2001-05-12/us/freedom.riders_1_freedom-riders-bus-station-birmingham-and-montgomery?_s=PM:US
*
© 2011 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-16/us/Zwerg.freedom.rides_1_greyhound-bus-bus-station-bus-trip?_s=PM:US
===
James Zwerg Recalls His Freedom Ride
Published in Beloit Magazine/Winter-Spring 1989
By Ann Bausum, '79
Many of his Beloit classmates will remember James Zwerg, '62, and his highly visible role in the Freedom Rides of 1961. His part in this volatile time in American history was brought to our attention for the first time, however, by Taylor Branch's new Pulitzer Prize-winning history Parting the Waters. Branch's account of the Freedom Rides, which sought to test federal rulings that interstate bus passengers could not be segregated in transit or in waiting rooms, is a vivid reminder of just how much has changed in the 28 years since those rides and how much courage it took to participate in them. We decided to follow up with Zwerg and relive those days with the perspective of passing time. -- Editor
First things first. "I'm no hero when compared to the other students and what they did," insists James Zwerg, '62.
Humility and modesty run deep in Zwerg, whose first career was 10 years of service as a minister and who is now a manager with IBM in Tucson.
Zwerg, originally from Appleton, Wis., went to the South during his junior year at Beloit College when he signed on for an exchange semester at the predominately black Fisk University in Nashville. His interest in attending a black institution developed through his friendship with Robert Carter, '62, his freshman roommate and one of a handful of black students at Beloit in the late 1950s.
Zwerg, a sociology major who already had an interest in the ministry, was astonished at selected incidents of racism that he experienced through Carter at Beloit. Some fraternities refused to take black members, for instance, prompting Zwerg to de-pledge from his house and join the integrated Beta Theta Pi. He decided he wanted to experience life as a minority and chose Fisk as his setting.
At Fisk, Zwerg was soon drawn to the Civil Rights movement and met John Lewis, a Fisk student who would also take part in the Freedom Rides. Lewis, now a U.S. congressman from Atlanta, was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a student-organized Civil Rights activist group. "I had never before encountered someone my age with such commitment," recalls Zwerg.
Soon Zwerg was helping with civil disobedience workshops as an "antagonist," testing future demonstrators with the types of verbal abuse that could be expected on site. "All my childhood I had a pretty short temper," Zwerg admits. "I couldn't imagine being as calm as these people were able to be."
So, when Zwerg was invited to "join the other side," he was reluctant for fear of being unable to restrain himself when tested with physical and verbal abuse. Still, he was discovering the unexpected power that can form in a group when its sum is greater than its parts.
Zwerg decided to give it a try. His first demonstration was at a "whites only" movie house. Zwerg bought two movie-tickets, then handed one to an accompanying black man. When they tried to enter the theatre, Zwerg was hit with a monkey wrench, knocked out cold and dragged to the edge of the sidewalk.
So began his efforts on behalf of Civil Rights. Zwerg participated in subsequent integration efforts at movie theatres and at lunch counters, and, when invited to become a member of SNCC, he joined.
The first Freedom Ride was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and departed from Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961. Thirteen riders were split between two busses with New Orleans as their destination. They traveled in integrated seating and patronized "whites only" snack counters without major incident until arriving at Aniston, Ala., where the first bus to arrive was attacked by a waiting mob.
The bus retreated to the highway, pursued by mob members, and broke down on the road from damage done at the station. It was ultimately set afire, and Freedom Riders were beaten as they escaped the flaming vehicle. Pictures of the bus appeared internationally and focused worldwide attention on the riders.
The second bus to arrive at Anniston was ultimately boarded by whites who beat up four Freedom Riders, two whites and two blacks, before the bus continued its journey to Birmingham still carrying the beaten riders and their attackers. It was welcomed at Birmingham by an angry mob of Ku Klax Klan members who had negotiated 15 minutes of violence without police intervention from sympathetic authorities. Freedom Riders were badly beaten and, once reunited with those from the first bus, ultimately fled Birmingham by airplane under tight security.
John Lewis, who had participated in the first Freedom Ride as far as South Carolina, gathered with Zwerg and other SNCC members in Nashville to discuss what should be done. They agreed that the ride could not be allowed to stop and they should try and continue it from Birmingham. Volunteers were sought, and among those chosen to go was James Zwerg, the only white male. Accompanying him were two white females and nine black men and women.
The volunteers realized their mission was extremely dangerous. Zwerg recalls writing his parents a letter that indicated he would probably be dead by the time they received it. Yet he also recalls that there was never a question in his mind of whether or not he should go.
"My faith was never so strong as during that time," he says. "I knew I was doing what I should be doing."
The group traveled by regular bus toward Birmingham without incident until it reached the Birmingham city limits where Zwerg and his black seating companion were arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus. The bus, with the remaining Freedom Riders still aboard, was escorted into Birmingham where police first harassed the participants on the bus and then found themselves in the awkward position of having to defend them from the hostile mob in the station. Ultimately there were put under "protective custody"; the blacks were eventually driven to the Tennessee border and dropped off.
Within three days of their original departure from Nashville, most of the group were reunited, including Zwerg. The group agreed to attempt to continue the ride by traveling to Montgomery along with additional student volunteers from Nashville. Their original bus was cancelled, so prospective passengers waited through the night at the Birmingham bus terminal under police protection from a mob that had swelled to 3,000.
After further delays, the trip proceeded under incredible security, including aircraft protection, that had been arranged for at the insistence of the federal government. However, escorting forces were forbidden to cross the Montgomery city line, and the bus pulled into a terminal that was eerie in its stillness.
In Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch records the chilling details of the violence that followed when several hundred rioters were permitted to range freely for ten minutes before police arrived to restore order. The Freedom Riders were variously thrown over the terminal ramp wall onto parked cars below, pelted with their luggage, dragged from taxis where they sought escape, and held down and beaten unconscious by groups of men and women who used bats, pipes, handbags and fists while crowds cheered them on.
James Zwerg's post-riot photographs, which were published nationwide in Time, LIFE and Associated Press newspapers, recorded the results of his brutal beating.
Branch writes: "One of the men grabbed Zwerg's suitcase and smashed him in the face with it. Others slugged him to the ground, and when he was dazed beyond resistance, one man pinned Zwerg's head between his knees so that the others could take turns hitting him. As they steadily knocked out his teeth, and his face and chest were streaming blood, a few adults on the perimeter put their children on their shouldesr to view the carnage. A small girl asked what the men were doing, and her father replied, 'Well, they're really carrying on.'"
The violence, amazingly, resulted in no deaths. Innocent blacks near the terminal were also beaten. So were journalists on hand to document the arrival and John Seigenthaler, aide to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who had been sent South to assist the travelers.
Zwerg was denied prompt medical attention at the end of the riot on the pretext that no white ambulances were available for transport. He remained unconscious in a Montgomery hospital for two-and-a-half days after the beating and stayed hospitalized for a total of five days. Only later did doctors diagnose that his injuries included a broken back.
Zwerg, whose religious faith had been considerably strengthened by earlier Civil Rights efforts, recalls that his beating was preceded by "an incredible religious experience." Upon asking God for the strength not to fight back, Zwerg describes feeling "a peace that I've never experienced again in my life.
There was noting particularly heroic in what I did," Zwerg concludes modestly at the end of his story. Then he adds: "If you want to talk about heroism, consider the black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said 'Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital. I don't know if he lived or died.
"Now that was heroic. I'd been trained. I knew what I was getting into. I didn't just come in off the street and give my life for another human being like he might have. I didn't do anything that hundreds of others weren't doing."
Even the incredible violence of Montgomery did not bring the Freedom Ride to an end, although the effort never drew as much attention - or violence - again. Subsequent trips led to systematic jailing of riders as supposed violators of state laws that tied up the movement's momentum in a tangle of state and federal maneuvering.
When news of Zwerg's efforts reached Beloit College, students and faculty responded by drafting resolutions of support for his participation. Copies were circulated on campus and sent to the president of the United States and the governor of Alabama, among others.
Zwerg's experience deepened his commitment to religion, which led him to Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill., and service as a minister in the United Church of Christ. He cites the Reverend Martin Luther King with helping him decide to enter the ministry during a half-hour meeting together when Zwerg was honored in 1961 with a "Freedom Award" by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Even though Zwerg ultimately changed his career, he comments that "the ministry will never be out of me entirely."
His experience also left Zwerg with an unswerving commitment to non-violence. "I couldn't have served in the military after that," notes Zwerg, for example.
Zwerg's parents had difficulty understanding their son's dedication to the cause of Civil Rights, and according to Zwerg, it took years to heal their relationship with him.
The father of three children, Zwerg believes that "if my son or daughter had that commitment, I'd say 'God Bless.'" He adds, though, "I would worry. It would be tough."
Zwerg was reunited with Lewis and another Civil Rights friend several years ago while on a business trip to Atlanta. He was brought up to date on many others by viewing the Public Broadcasting System's Civil Rights documentary, "Eyes on the Prize," which he praises for its accuracy and impact.
Zwerg revisited Montgomery on the 25th anniversary of the Freedom Rides to take part in a Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary on them. At one point during filming, Zwerg was riding a bus into Montgomery. Although the film crew did not notice it, Zwerg was immediately struck by the fact that the driver of the bus was black and the passenger directly behind him was a young black man. Zwerg started a conversation with the black passenger and learned that he had never heard of the Freedom Riders or their reception in Montgomery.
"Here was a young 16-year-old riding to Montgomery without a thought in his head about the Freedom Rides. Riding that bus was the most natural thing in the world for him to do." Zwerg asks rhetorically: "Did we accomplish something with our rides? You bet we did!"
Copyright 1989 Beloit College
http://www.beloit.edu/archives/documents/archival_documents/james_zwerg_freedom_ride/
===
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