Group of Freedom Riders honored in Nassau

A group of Freedom Riders who risked their lives to challenge racism in the Jim Crow South told Long Islanders they should honor Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday by confronting injustice wherever it is.

Three of the '60s activists were honored Saturday night in Carle Place: David Myers, of Ellenton, Fla., and his wife, Winonah Beamer Myers; and Jean Denton-Thompson.

"We as humans have to realize that if one person is mistreated it affects all of us," said Denton-Thompson, 70, of Amherst, Mass. "We are one race, and it's the human race."

The Freedom Riders were more than 400 civil rights activists who rode buses to the South to test a U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in terminals serving interstate buses.

Their first ride was on May 4, 1961. Many of the activists were beaten and arrested, but the trips ended in November with the federal government banning segregated transportation facilities.

"It was something that had to be done," Denton-Thompson said. "People need to continue what we did."

More than 50 people attended the reception at LL Dent, a restaurant in Carle Place, including civil rights leaders, government officials, administrators and church leaders.

Organizer Julius O. Pearse, 78, a historian from Freeport, said he invited the Freedom Riders to teach young people more about the achievements of the civil rights movement.

"What they did was in keeping with Dr. King," Pearse said. "They didn't know when they got on the bus if they would get home alive."

King, who at 35 became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1964, was assassinated four years later.

"Dr. King was one of our heroes," Beamer Myers said.

Myers, now 71, a former journalist, and Beamer Myers, now 70, were married in April 1962. At the time of the Freedom Rides, both were students at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio.

"When I took part in it, I didn't think it would be that big," Myers said. "But it just caught fire."