Freedom riders’ 1947 convictions vacated in North Carolina

By TOM FOREMAN Jr.
Associated Press

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (AP) — Legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and three other men had their convictions vacated posthumously. They were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina after launching the first of the “freedom rides” to challenge Jim Crow laws, which mandated segregation on buses. Friday’s ceremony vacating their convictions took place at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough. Rustin was a pioneer of the civil rights movement and an adviser to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He was instrumental in organizing the 1963 March on Washington.