Margie Conlin will present her well-researched lecture on the Chestertown Freedom Riders of 1962 at the Democratic Club May 12 meeting at O’Connor’s Restaurant. All are welcome to attend.
The presentation will start at 7:00 with the social hour / dinner beginning at 5:30. Guests can order dinner or an appetizer off the menu or just come in for a drink before the presentation. The Club will provide pitchers of soda and iced tea but other drinks are on a cash basis. O’Connors is located at 844 High St. in Chestertown.
The Chestertown Freedom Riders of 1962 continued the movement of freedom rides started in the 1960’s, and an epic one in 1961 which started in Washington D.C. and Nashville, Tennessee, and rode into the deep south. The rides were meant as peaceful demonstrations against the rampant, sometimes insidious and often violent mistreatment of blacks –what we now call the Jim Crow South. Those Freedom Riders of 1961 were met with violence and near-death. Two very well-known legislators in Washington, D.C., House Members Rep. John L. Lewis, and Rep. Elijah Cummings, who rode the busses from D.C. during that violent journey, still serve our country today in Congress.
Freedom Riders came to Chestertown one year later. This is a short story of that revolt, started in Chestertown in February of 1962, and going on throughout the year in smaller venues, like Easton, Maryland, and beyond.
Margie was born and raised into a Democratic family in the East Oak Lane section of Philadelphia. She is the youngest of seven children of Elsie and Howard Conlin. Margie has a journalism degree from Temple University and a counseling psychology degree from Bowie State University. She is a wife, a friend, a sister, a writer and a lifelong liberal. She has lived in Chestertown since 2005 with her husband Dave, one dog, two cats and 35 houseplants. While her husband is Republican, Margie and the dog are Democrats.
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