New Generation Traces Justice Trail

More than 20 years ago, Jessie Kupers’ father was in the thick of the struggle for civil rights in the South as a UCLA medical student looking into health problems of poor blacks. Saturday, Jessie, 13, boarded a freedom bus bound for Mississippi with a similar mission in mind.

“I decided to go because racism is still present, and I want people to know that there are people who care,” said Jessie, a student of the 32nd Street Performing Arts Magnet.

A generation gap was apparent outside the Watts Towers as a contingent of young people departed for Philadelphia, Miss., for a special commemoration of the brutal slaying of three civil rights workers a quarter century ago. For the older generation who came to say their goodbys, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Henry Schwerner were household names in the turbulent 1960s. For most of those who left on the Greyhound, the three were virtually unknown until last year’s Academy Award-winning movie, “Mississippi Burning.”

Generation gap aside, there was a common bond: they agree that the work the three civil rights workers helped pioneer is far from finished.

The civil rights “caravan” left Watts with 43 people--mostly college students--who will trace the historic route of the civil rights struggle in the South. They will stop at Little Rock, Ark., Selma and Montgomery, Ala., and go on to Philadelphia, Miss., before joining hundreds of other freedom riders from around the country in Washington to participate in memorial services and congressional meetings. The caravan will make its final stop in New York.

Training of Field Workers

The commemoration is organized by the Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Memorial Coalition and Human SERVE, a national voting rights organization. The group is using the event to train field workers and highlight its campaign for automatic voter registration and other electoral reform.

Chaney, a black Meridian, Miss., resident, and Goodman and Schwerner, two white New Yorkers, were conducting a voter registration drive when they were arrested on a traffic violation and taken to jail in Philadelphia. After their release on June 21, 1964, a gang of police and Ku Klux Klansmen kidnaped them. Their bodies were found 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam. Murder charges were dropped in state court but a federal court later convicted seven men for violating civil rights laws.

Ben Chaney, president of the James Earl Chaney Foundation, named after his slain brother, came from Meridian to send off the Los Angeles contingent. “We have to educate the young, rededicate the old, and rekindle the spirit of the movement,” he said.

In a brief address to the “freedom riders,” Chaney noted that he was arrested 21 times for civil rights causes before he was 12 years old. The participation by the Los Angeles young people, he said, is a “statement of courage.”

Said Chaney: “We’ve moved ahead, but even though poll taxes and literacy tests are things of the past, illiteracy and economic injustice are still in our way. We can start to progress only through increased participation and easier voter registration.”

The question of economic justice was on the minds of several of the freedom riders.

Kate Sullivan, 18, a freshman drama student at UC Irvine, said she is making the trip to contribute to the fight against racism. “All of my life I have seen racism and economic oppression,” she said. “Why is it when I drive past on Skid Row I see that most of the homeless people are black? The black community needs to be empowered, and increased voter registration is the first step toward this.”

Sullivan’s friend, Manami Kano, a 17-year-old Japanese-American, said the freedom ride was “not an ordinary outing” for her. “Racism hits me,” she said. “The status quo shows so little tolerance for other races.”

Ruth Kupers, 48, Jessie’s mother, told her friends how Jessie had raised more than $200 to pay for his trip and talked his teachers into allowing him to take his exams early. As Jessie was about to board the bus, his mother, a marriage and family therapist, embraced him and reminded him that he had promised to phone her every day.

The departure was delayed for a few minutes to accommodate the arrival of three black South Africans who are making the trip. Charmaine Motjadji, 38, a graduate student in film at UCLA, said she had encouraged her 20-year-old son, Ouda, and two other black South Africans who attend Santa Monica College to make the trip “to see the historical aspect of the struggle.”

Said Motjadji: “The American people always support our struggle . . . we want to support theirs. Their struggle is our struggle, too. We are fighting for the vote; they have the vote but they don’t use it.”