On this day in 1962

Jan. 18, 1962

Jackson Police photograph of Dion Diamond after his 1961 arrest for integrating a Mississippi bus station terminal. Credit: Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History

Officials at Southern University at Baton Rouge, Louisiana — under pressure from the state — closed the doors after students protested those kicked out of school for taking part in sit-ins. 

State police occupied the campus to try and end these protests, and when SNCC field secretary Dion Diamond tried to meet with students, police jailed him on charges of criminal anarchy for “attempting to overthrow the state of Louisiana.” 

The white guards told Black inmates if they gave Diamond a difficult time, “you may get time off for good behavior,” he recalled. After the guards left, the inmates promised to protect him instead. He wound up serving 60 days in jail before being released. 

He was only 15 when he began his activism, sitting at “whites-only” lunch counters. When he was involved in a 1960 sit-in in Arlington, Virginia, American Nazi leader George Rockwell spewed insults at him. 

In May 1961, he became a Freedom Rider. He said he was thinking it might be a long weekend; instead it turned out to be two and a half years. After he and other riders arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested and sent to the state’s worst prison, Parchman, because the city ran out of jail space. 

In all, Diamond was arrested about 30 times. He remains grateful for the experience. “Any time I pick up a historical publication,” he told NPR, “I feel as if a period or a comma in that book is my contribution.”

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