Museum hosts Freedom Riders exhibit

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - The Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson opens an exhibit Saturday to honor the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders.

The exhibit is composed of 16 contemporary portraits of the Freedom Riders by photographer Eric Etheridge along with prints of the original 330 mug shots of those arrested in 1961.

The exhibition will run through June 12.

The Freedom Riders staged protests in Mississippi and the South during 1961, riding buses, trains and planes, and staging sit-ins at segregated restaurants, lunch counters and hotels.

Museum officials said in a news release that Etheridge discovered the mug shots in the files of now defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.

He later updated the photos of the Freedom Riders, which were included with the mug shots in his 2008 book.