With that introduction, Claude Liggins captured my attention.

My bus tour partners have interviewed a few former Freedom Riders along our journey, but it wasn’t until we reached the City of Angels that I finally met one of them. It turns out Liggins also spent most of his early to mid-20s participating in marches and picket lines, trying to secure equality for himself and other blacks.

While my colleague Andy interviewed Liggins, I watched and listened, hoping for answers to my own questions from earlier in the journey. We’d been re-tracing much of the Freedom Riders’ route through the South. How fearful were they? What drove them to stay on those Greyhound buses and not just get off at the next terminal, or even at a rest stop? Was it all worth the death threats, the violence against them? Did they ever have second thoughts?

"I always wanted to be a part of something," the white-haired Liggins said, with calm, self-assured conviction. "I didn’t want to just read about it. I heard that a bus had left D.C. to test the Greyhound bus depots, and I thought, ‘I should’ve been on it.’ "

So when opportunity arose for Liggins to get on board, he did.

His decision resulted in getting arrested and being jailed in a maximum security cell on a charge of breaching the peace. "So many Freedom Riders were there that there were three people in a cell, rather than the usual two," he said.

To pass time, he and others sang civil rights songs. It angered the guards so much that they took the prisoners outdoors, deep into the woods, fired water hoses on them, unleashed attack dogs, and held guns to their heads to make them stop singing.

"I was never one to be afraid to take a chance," Liggins said. "I wasn’t afraid of dying. The more I participated, the more I wanted to change things. I have no regrets, except that I didn’t do more."

With a slight chuckle, he added, "I don’t know what more I could’ve done."

During a Q&A with Andy, Liggins remarked how rare it is these days to meet another Freedom Rider-–partly because there were only 400 of them trying to integrate interstate buses and terminals.

After the interview, Andy thanked him for speaking so much from his heart. Then Andy said, "And, thank you for what you did."

I second that.