Freedom Rider Raps 'Cooling Off,' Tells 300 Marchers of Bus-Burning

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's proposed "cooling-off period" was not a popular idea among those involved in the Freedom Rider movement, CORE spokesmen told a crowd of 300 in the Boston Common yesterday.

Joseph Perkins, field secretary of the Congress on Racial Equality and one of the original riders on the Greyhound bus that was burned at Anniston, Ala., said, "We don't feel we should stop our major offensive. We should continue until we have reached our objective." The audience, evenly divided between Negroes and whites, applauded loudly.

Perkins pointed out that the movement would appear to be stopped by violence if it desisted now. He compared "those in the South who think they're superior because they're white" to the devotees of Hitler's "master race" philosophy, and asked, "Should we appease this monster?"

There are other reasons for the Attorney General's request besides a desire for a peaceful settlement, Perkins charged. Administration officials are worried about having "an unfavorable atmosphere around the President" when he travels to Vienna and Paris, Perkins said, but "even if there was a cooling off period, other countries would know there was trouble here."

March to Common

In the opening prayer, the Rev. Herbert O. Edwards of the Union Baptist Church, Cambridge, said, "Give our President the moral courage he so justly accused his predecessor of lacking. . . . Forgive our Attorney General for not realizing that change is never convenient."

Perkins' talk came at the end of "Freedom March" down Columbus Ave., from Carter Playground in Roxbury to Parkman Bandstand on the Common.

Perkins described the Greyhound's trip through the Carolinas and Georgia as relatively peaceful, but he said, once the bus passed into Alabama, people began to taunt, "You ain't in Georgia now. You in Alabama." He told how a mob burned the bus after stopping it a few miles out of Anniston and throwing a fire bomb through a window.

"At the house on the left side of the road a white man said, 'Get off my property,'" Perkins related. "At the house on the right, a white woman offered aid. . . . Those burned or overcome by smoke were treated at Anniston Hospital, and immediately asked to leave. Once an emergency is over, local customs come right back."

"I could be a graduate of Harvard and a millionaire, and still not get a cup of coffee in Vicksburg," Perkins said. "The law needs enforcement." He viewed Robert Kennedy's charge to the I.C.C. to end bus segregation as a notable victory.

Charge Discrimination in Boston

Alan Gartner, chairman of Boston CORE, asserted that "the Trailways bus company here at Boston does not have a clean record, either. There are no colored employees in New England Trailways above the rank of porter or janitor." He also mentioned instances of discrimination in housing.

After the speeches, many people--mostly Negro women, both old and young--lined up to shake hands with Perkins. One Negro woman said to him, "I've seen it on television and read it in the papers, but it's nothing like hearing it first hand." And nearly all were eager just to touch him and to say, "I wish you luck . . . we'll be behind you."