Jimmy Allen Ruth, the man who shuttled the Nashville Freedom Riders from Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963, has died, his family announced.
He was 83.
Ruth was just 23 when he and a group of Freedom Riders left A & I (Fisk) University in Nashville, a journey that his family called “one of his greatest accomplishments.” Every other bus driver with Trailways turned down the job.
The bus now sits on display at the Tennessee State Museum.
“He was always jolly, never met a stranger and had an amazing memory,” his family wrote in his obituary.
More than 400 civil rights activists, including John Lewis, C.T. Vivian and Diane Nash, rode interstate buses through the segregated south in protest in the early 1960s, hoping to draw attention. The protests were met with violent mobs and arrests, but also the national headlines they were looking for.
“If they were going to die, I was going to die with them,” Ruth famously said.
Ruth is survived by his sister, brother, two step-daughters, eight step-grandchildren, 17 step-great grandchildren and ten step great-great grandchildren.
