- [Betty Williams] We cannot change history, but we can make the history.

Why can't we start making history now?

My name is Betty Williams.

I grew up in Herdek Arkansas, and I'm a Reverse Freedom Rider.

When I came from the south to the north, I was about 18 years of age.

My childhood was some parts of it was very fun.

Some parts of it was very, very sad.

And when I was much smaller, I think those was my really good times.

It was 13 of us siblings in all.

And I am the second to the oldest.

We always played like children don't get chance to play here in this city, but then my mom didn't have anything there, no education, no kind of work.

It was nothing there for my mother to do.

- What do you suppose will be the ultimate accomplishment of this program?

- The ultimate accomplishment of course, has already been obtained.

And that is to focus attention on the hypocrisy of the Northern liberals and the NAACP urban league and people like that especially.

- We intend to continue it until those people in the majority, tell those politicians we are through with this foolishness about civil rights and things that you're using for political purposes.

(somber piano playing) - Most of the people who came had only a shopping bag with perhaps one change of clothing, no money, knowing nobody.

It was one of the most inhuman things that I have ever seen.

- My mother was told she was going to have better everything.

She was going to have a job, and she was going to be able to support her family and her children was going to be able to get an education, you know, be able to go to school.

You know, that alone was not the truth.

- The first question that most of the arrivals asked was "Where is President Kennedy?

We were told that he was going to meet us at the bus."

- She was actually told that, that the Kennedy was going to meet her wherever she was dropped off in Hyannis.

She was thinking that they was going to be there.

So she went to Hyannis, but I don't know how many Kennedys she got a chance to meet.

I guess when you get to be an adult, you just kind of block out things, things you just don't want to remember.

I don't know what it is, but I don't remember a lot about the bus.

All I knew I was on the bus and I remember them giving me a ticket or something like that, whatever.

I don't know how much money they gave me.

I don't even remember none of that stuff.

This is me and my mom.

That's me.

And that's my wonderful mother who is gone on to be with the Lord.

We didn't really have anything.

We just had our clothing.

We didn't have furniture and stuff like that we can bring here.

I don't know.

I think I was a little bit angry when I came here too, because I know, I remember I used to go out and I used to never smile that much.

I never smiled.

- As I drove one family up one evening, the young son in the family asked me, "Where are the cotton fields?"

I said, "We have no cotton fields here."

He said, "Well, what am I going to do to find employment?

I can chop cotton.

I don't know how to do anything else."

- When you come here, you have no education.

You have no Nothing to know how to fill out an application about a job.

You have no resume to put out there, but you just had to get out there.

And you just had to find where the job was at.

When I first started working, I started working as a cleaning lady and then I didn't know that all my life, this is what I was going to be.

We came to the Massachusetts with hope and that we was going to have a better life.

And life has been, it has been good in some ways, and life has been down in some way.

Life has been a struggle and life has been up.

Life has been down.

It has been all of that.

Family got into the drugs and alcohol.

We was introduced it to things that we wasn't introduced to when we was in the south.

It has been a journey.

But the people from Arkansas that sent us from the south to the north, I have no anger in my heart against gets them.

I don't want no hatred to live in my heart nowhere.

I don't have no room for that.

So I just keep moving forward.

(somber piano)