Catherine Burks-Brooks (October 8, 1939 – July 3, 2023) was a fearless American civil rights activist, educator, social worker, entrepreneur, and newspaper editor whose unyielding defiance during the Freedom Rides of 1961 played a pivotal role in challenging and ultimately dismantling Jim Crow segregation across the South. Born near Selma, Alabama, as one of five or six children to Texieanna (Martin) Burks, a presser in a Birmingham dry-cleaning plant, and an unnamed father who later urged her to prioritize her studies amid the chaos of activism, Burks-Brooks grew up in the Birmingham suburb of Center Point during the height of racial terror and oppression. Her summers spent with her grandmother in Selma ignited an early “inner fire” of resistance; by age 11, she boldly refused to step into the street to yield to white pedestrians—a direct violation of Birmingham’s unwritten racial etiquette that could invite violence—earning her a reputation for a sharp tongue, critical eye, and profound sense of justice that would define her life.
As a student at Tennessee A&I State University (now Tennessee State University) in Nashville, Burks-Brooks dove headlong into the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Nashville Student Movement, immersing herself in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, theaters, and bus stations. Under the mentorship of icons like John Lewis and Diane Nash, she honed her nonviolent protest techniques through rigorous training, emerging fearless after multiple arrests in Nashville—even staging solo demonstrations back in Birmingham during breaks. “I was a member of a group that was sitting in, that had integrated the bus stations, the movie houses, the restaurants,” she later recalled in a 2021 interview, emphasizing how these experiences built her resolve. Motivated in part by conversations with African exchange students who shared stories of pre-colonial Black civilizations that had been “beaten down” by oppression, she saw the fight not just as survival, but as reclamation.
The turning point came in May 1961, when news of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)’s initial Freedom Rides—interracial bus journeys to test Supreme Court desegregation rulings—reached Nashville. After violent attacks in Anniston and Birmingham halted the rides, with drivers refusing to continue, Burks-Brooks and a core group of nine Nashville students, including her boyfriend Paul Brooks, volunteered to press on. “We had been trained,” she said simply of her lack of fear, boarding a Greyhound bus on May 17 bound for Montgomery. To evade scrutiny, the group scattered throughout the bus—unlike John Lewis and white rider Jim Zwerg, who defiantly claimed the front seats. The journey quickly devolved into a nightmare: In Birmingham, segregationist Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor stormed aboard, barking orders to separate by race. He arrested Lewis and Zwerg, then scanned tickets to identify the Nashville contingent, detaining them for hours on the sweltering bus with windows blacked out and boarded up. Burks-Brooks’ mother, Texieanna, rushed to the scene but was barred from seeing her daughter, a heartbreaking detail that underscored the personal toll. Eventually shuttled to the “White” waiting room and arrested “for their own protection” against mob violence, the riders spent grueling hours in the station before Connor loaded them into a paddy wagon for the humiliating drive to the Alabama-Tennessee state line. As he sneered, “Y’all get back to Nashville on the train and don’t come back,” Burks-Brooks shot back with iconic wit: “We’ll see you back in Birmingham by high noon.”
“We knew there was a possibility that we might die. But once you lose the fear, there is nothing else (after that).”
True to her word, she returned the next day, plunging deeper into the fray. On May 20 in Montgomery, she witnessed the savage mob assault on Jim Zwerg, who was beaten unconscious at the bus station—a scene she later recounted vividly in the PBS documentary *Freedom Riders*, her voice steady amid the horror. The following day, she endured the siege of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s First Baptist Church by thousands of enraged segregationists hurling bricks and threats. Undeterred, the group pushed into Mississippi, where they were arrested in Jackson on trumped-up “breach of peace” charges and sentenced to 39 days in the infamous Parchman Farm penitentiary. There, amid beatings, forced labor, and dehumanizing conditions, Burks-Brooks prioritized survival with pragmatic defiance—securing a top bunk to avoid the vermin-infested floor and co-editing the clandestine *Mississippi Free Press* from 1962 to 1963 to smuggle out stories of resistance. Her father, desperate for her to salvage her degree, wired money for final exams, but Tennessee A&I expelled her just nine days shy of graduation—a devastating blow that symbolized the era’s institutional backlash against Black excellence and activism.
In August 1961, amid the whirlwind, Burks-Brooks married Paul Brooks, her fellow rider and steadfast partner in the Mississippi voter registration drives they undertook together in the years following. The couple separated in the 1970s, but she raised two daughters, Hiala Brooks and another named Gatlin (full name not widely detailed), along with a grandson, instilling in them the same unapologetic spirit.
Redirecting her revolutionary energy into building and uplifting communities, Burks-Brooks taught elementary school in 1964, then served as a social worker in Detroit from 1965 to 1966, aiding families navigating urban inequities. Embracing her creative heritage, she became a jeweler and retailer specializing in African-inspired jewelry, clothing, and artifacts—a nod to the cultural pride that fueled her activism. The 1970s found her in the Bahamas, perhaps seeking respite or new horizons, before she returned to Birmingham in 1979. There, she thrived as a district sales manager for Avon Cosmetics from 1982 to 1998, empowering women through economic independence, and as a longtime substitute teacher in Birmingham City Schools, where in 2011 she urged students to “know your history” and honor the interracial sacrifices that ended bus segregation.
Her contributions were formally recognized in 2008 when Tennessee State University bestowed honorary doctorates upon her and other expelled Freedom Riders, a poetic restitution for the education stolen by segregation’s long shadow. Until her final days, Burks-Brooks volunteered as a speaker, sharing her stories with schools, churches, and civic groups—her wit undimmed, her conviction unbroken.
Even in 2021, marking the 60th anniversary of the Rides, she reflected with quiet astonishment: “It does not feel like 60 years have passed,” crediting the era’s progress to persistent youth activism, from SNCC to Black Lives Matter, though she warned of backsliding on voting rights. Having registered to vote in her 20s in Birmingham after the 1965 Voting Rights Act—walking into the courthouse without a single hurdle—she decried modern suppression tactics as cowardly attempts to “stop the people” and called on Congress to safeguard federal protections: “They know the right thing to do, but they won’t do it.” Optimistic yet vigilant, she saw no jeopardy in hard-won gains, only a relay race handed to “active young Black people” marching forward, albeit in new rhythms.
Burks-Brooks died peacefully at her Center Point home on July 3, 2023, at 83, leaving behind a legacy etched in blood, banter, and boundless resolve—one of the last living Freedom Riders, as chronicled in Raymond Arsenault’s *Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice* and the acclaimed PBS documentary of the same name. Her life reminds us that history’s architects are often ordinary souls—Black women, in particular—who, armed with training, truth, and a timely quip, bend the arc toward justice. As she might say, the ride continues.