Freedom Riders find 'an altogether different world'

Rep. John Lewis joins other Freedom Riders aboard a bus in Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (CNN) -- Angry mobs present 40 years ago were absent Saturday as "Freedom Riders" retraced their original bus route into U.S. history.

Instead of being beaten as they were in 1961, the 2001 group of civil-rights activists received a very different reception.

Four of the 13 original "Freedom Riders" were making the anniversary trip from Atlanta, Georgia, to the Alabama cities of Anniston, Birmingham and Montgomery, said John Lewis, one of the original Freedom Riders. In all, some 35 people who made at least part of the perilous journey 40 years ago were among the passengers aboard the three air-conditioned buses that retraced the route.

"It's a different climate, a different environment today," Lewis, a Georgia congressman, said Saturday. It was his first trip back to Birmingham's Greyhound bus station with the same people he spent a night with during the summer of 1961.

"It's very moving. To come back now to be greeted by the mayor, escorted by police and state troopers," Lewis said. "It's an altogether different world."

VIDEO Hank Thomas describes his experience challenging segregation on the Freedom Ride 40 years ago (May 12) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media) John Lewis, a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and now a congressman, recounts the Freedom Rides (May 10) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)    IN-DEPTH Black History Month: Chasing the Dream     RESOURCES Trace the path of the Freedom Riders     EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES From HighWired: Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I have a dream' speech From Holt, Rinehart and Winston: School segregation, 1964     CNN ACCESS John Lewis: 'I thought I was going to die'

Lewis and 12 others, some black, some white, and most college students, set out May 4, 1961, from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, Louisiana, to test a new federal law against segregation. They never made it to New Orleans.

In Anniston, the original bus carrying the Freedom Riders was fire bombed. As they struggled to get out of the bus, the group was beaten. In Birmingham, the group was forced to spend the night in the so-called "colored" waiting room at a bus station. In Montgomery, the riders were forced to take refuge from mobs in a church.

"The KKK threatened to bomb the church," Lewis recalled.

During the original journey, the group of 13 grew to as many as 1,000, but the ride ended May 25, 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, where they were met by an angry mob of white segregationists.

"They beat us, bloodied us, beat me unconscious," Lewis recalled. The riders were then arrested and jailed.

Sentenced to 60 days in jail and a $250 fine, Lewis spent 37 days in city and county jails and a state penitentiary. Mississippians raised the bail money to free Lewis and the others.

This weekend's retracing of the 1961 journey had a decidedly different tone. In Anniston, the mayor gave the 2001 Freedom Riders keys to the city. In Birmingham, the riders were treated to a visit to the city's Civil Rights Institute, and in Montgomery, the group planned to revisit the church they took refuge in.

Lewis, a 61-year-old Alabama native and the son of a sharecropper, said he and U.S. society have come a long way. But he cautioned, "we still have a distance to go."

Lewis offered one goal of the modern day Freedom Ride. "More than anything else, we've come to the South to say to America we must tear down the walls of white and colored."