Pauline Knight-Ofusu

Part of the May 28 wave of Freedom Riders from the Nashville Student Movement, Pauline Knight-Ofusu escaped the violence of the earlier rides. Pauline Knight was a 20-year-old Tennessee State student when she was arrested in Jackson, MS. After being transferred to Hinds County Jail, she led a brief hunger strike among the female Riders.

"I got up one morning in May and I said to my folks at home, ‘I won't be back today because I am a Freedom Rider,'" said Knight-Ofusu in her interview for Freedom Riders. "It was like a wave or a wind, and you didn't know where it was coming from but you knew you were supposed to be there. Nobody asked me, nobody told me."