By Bob Keefe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WASHINGTON -- The two black men boarded the buses in Washington along with 11 others, both white and black, bound for an unforgettably harrowing journey through the segregated South.
By the time they arrived in Mississippi in May 1961, John Lewis had been beaten for trying to use a "Whites Only" bathroom.
Hank Thomas barely escaped a firebombed bus, was arrested for trying to use a white man's bathroom and was left by police at the hands of Ku Klux Klan.
"It was my good fortune," said Thomas, who was 19 at the time, "that I could run fast."
Today, John Lewis is a Democratic congressman representing Atlanta. Thomas is a Stone Mountain businessman who with his wife owns two McDonald's restaurants and a Marriott hotel franchise.
Together, Lewis, Thomas and other members of that first "Freedom Ride" are planning to once again retrace their hellish 1961 journey, which was intended to be a nonviolent protest of Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South.
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/georgians-other-freedom-riders-536975.html