The Life and Times of Lila Mae Williams

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Gabriela Emmanuel has talked to several of Lila Mae Williams children and grandchildren. The family's life in Arkansas before the trip north was harsh in its own ways, with poverty and the white supremacist regime of Jim Crow. Many of the children remember the bus ride north, but they had no idea it was part of some political scheme or that their mother had in some way been misled into taking the trip.

As conservative governors try to score political points by depositing busloads and planeloads of migrants in liberal cities, it can seem like an unprecedented exercise in cruelty. But it’s a page ripped from an earlier playbook in U.S. politics, one that was forgotten for decades for a very good reason. Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson revisit the racist Reverse Freedom Rides of the 1960s.

Featuring:

Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, Michael and Denise ‘68 Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, author of Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, and co-host of the podcast This Day in Esoteric Political History.

WBUR reporter Gabrielle Emanuel, who has done groundbreaking reporting on the Reverse Freedom Rides.

Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.