"GMA" shares the story of Hezekiah Watkins, the youngest Freedom Rider, and how he is bringing the past to life for the next generation.

An Apollo Beach resident and prominent civil rights activist shares her story about being a Freedom Rider helping to desegregate airports in the 1960s.

Dr. Norman Francis, former HBCU president and influential leader in education and banking, died in New Orleans, Louisiana, at age 94 on February 18, 2026.

Norman C. Francis was one of the most influential New Orleanians of the past century. These five moments and memories help show his impact.

In 1961, when Hezekiah Watkins was 13, he was arrested and placed on death row after entering the “whites only” section of a bus station in Jackson, Mississippi.

When the Freedom Riders rolled into Jackson in 1961, Mississippi responded with mass arrests — and the Riders answered with a strategy that reshaped the civil rights movement.

On May 20, 1961, Jim Zwerg and 21 others boarded a Greyhound bus in Birmingham, Ala., bound for Montgomery, and ultimately, New Orleans. Some on the bus were white, like Zwerg. Most were black. All ...

73 year old Hezekiah Watkins now spends his days working at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on Lee. He's not just an employee. He's a part of history. And so you grew up in the midst of the civil ...

Hezekiah Watkins was just 13 years old when he was arrested in Jackson in 1961 along with dozens of other civil rights activists. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2026, Watkins received an official ...