Frederick Leonard (activist)
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Frederick Leonard is an American activist who was involved in the civil rights movement.
| External videos | |
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 “Eyes on the Prize; Interview with Frederick Leonard” conducted in 1985 for the Eyes on the Prize documentary. |
Leonard participated in the Nashville sit-ins in 1960 while attending Tennessee State University.[1] He also participated in a Freedom Ride that started on May 17, 1961, and travelled from Nashville to Birmingham.[1] In a 1985 interview with Blackside Inc., which produced Eyes on the Prize, Leonard elaborated his experience on the Freedom Ride. When the Greyhound bus arrived at the terminal in Montgomery, he recalled "the Klan [came] through with their guns and their robes and everything",[2] but the Freedom Riders felt at ease because they were being escorted by police. As soon as they reached the terminal in Birmingham, he noticed the police had suddenly vanished and the terminal looked deserted and eerie. He said that after he noticed the police were gone, "all of a sudden, just like, whoosh, magic, white people, sticks and bricks [appeared]".[2] The riders were trapped; the bus was surrounded. There was a debate about whether or not to exit the back of the bus so that, " ...it wouldn't be so bad," [2] or to exit the front of the bus and "...take what was coming [to them]."[2]
Jim Zwerg, a white rider, decided to exit the bus first before everyone else and receive the full brutality of the mob. Leonard believes that Zwerg saved him and the other blacks on that bus. He stated in the Blackside Inc. interview: "I think that's what saved me, Bernard Lafayette, and Allen Cason 'cause Jim Zwerg walked off the bus...and they [the white mob] pulled him in...it's...like they didn't even see the rest of us."[2] After exiting the front of the bus unrecognized, Leonard, Lafayette, and Cason escaped and headed to Fred Shuttlesworth's house in Birmingham to seek safety and shelter.[2]
Personal life
Leonard was born August 11, 1942. He later married Joy Reagon, who was also a Freedom Rider.[1] After his arrest and the court proceedings that followed, Leonard and his then-wife moved to Detroit to start a new life and later had a child. Leonard went to work at the Chrysler plant before returning to Nashville. He founded his own company selling Afro hair picks out of a building on Jefferson Street in what is now an affluent Germantown neighborhood. The company was successful, selling hair picks to drug stores up and down the Northeast.