In June 1961, six Minnesotans boarded a bus to challenge the Jim Crow laws of the South which required whites to sit in the front of the bus and blacks to sit in the back. They faced violence, arrest, and imprisonment. They would change America and transform themselves. Among them was 20 year old Claire O’Connor, a student in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Claire would be arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and spend 28 days and nights in jail, including the infamous Parchman Prison. She would return to Mississippi in 1964-1965 to work on voter registration.

The EAST SIDE FREEDOM LIBRARY and

AFRICAN AMERICAN REGISTRY

invite you to hear

CLAIRE O’CONNOR tell her story.