Carol Ruth Silver

Carol Ruth Silver: Freedom Rider 50 years later
Sam Whiting, Chronicle Staff Writer
Published 4:00 am, Thursday, April 14, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/

In early April, former San Francisco Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver is in Afghanistan. In late April, Oprah Winfrey is flying her to Chicago for a show celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders. In May, she goes to Jackson, Miss.

All along, her mug shot is also on display in "Breach of Peace," a then-and-now photography show about the Mississippi Freedom Riders at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

Q:What is your definition of a Freedom Rider?

A: The Freedom Rides started in May of 1961 in Washington, D.C., when a bunch of white and black people got together on a Greyhound bus to challenge segregation in the South. The bus was burned in Alabama. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) put out a call for people to continue the rides.

Q:What was your job?

A: On June 2, 1961, I got on a bus in New York bound for Jackson. The bus went to Nashville, where we wrote our wills. When we arrived in Jackson, on June 7, I went into the bus station waiting room marked "Colored." I took three steps and was arrested and transported to the city jail.

Q:What was the headgear you were wearing in that mug shot?

A: I wish I knew. I think it was just some scarf I had, and my hair was a mess.

Q: How long were you there?

A: My sentence was six months, but I bailed out after 40 days.

Q:Was it worth it?

A: We were doing something to change the world in a very direct and dangerous way. Just like the kids in Libya with their Facebook apps are changing the world, we changed the world.

Q:When were you a San Francisco supervisor?

A: 1977 to 1989.

Q:What is your legacy on the Board of Supervisors?

A: As a colleague of Harvey Milk, our legacy was to significantly shift the balance of power to younger and less affluent people in the city of San Francisco. We were the first district-elected supervisors who had roots in the ethnic communities of the city.

Q:Do you still live in the same district?

A: I do. I live in the same house, on a little alley in the Mission District.

Q:Neighborhood hangout?

A: My son's restaurant. It's called the SouthEnd Grill 'n' Bar on Valencia Street.

Q:Describe your occupation?

A: I'm a semiretired real estate lawyer and a do-good philanthropist-educator.

Q:Latest project?

A: I am going to Ghazni, Afghanistan, in support of the Hayward-Ghazni Sister City Committee, which I co-founded in 2004, and to promote the extension of OLPC (One Laptop per Child.) Last time I was there I helped hand out 700 of these laptops in Kandahar.

Q:How did you get involved?

A: I had gone to Afghanistan directly after the American incursion there, in 2002, to try to see what kind of help Americans might want to give after we had finished mashing them into smithereens. This is my fifth trip.

Q:Where did you grow up?

A: Worchester, Mass., a Rust Belt town about 50 miles from Boston.

Q:Were you always a rabble-rouser?

A: Yep. I was the oldest of three girls, and my father looked on me as the chief heir of his ambitions to be a lawyer. I always had an independent way of thinking.

Q:What would you buy if you could?

A: Three million laptop computers for the little girls in Afghanistan.

Q:If you weren't doing this, what would you do?

A: Writing. I have a number of projects I haven't completed - two movie scripts, an opera and a short story. The short story is about the brothels in Nevada. I've always been interested in sex as a profession.

Q:Who plays you in the movie?

A: In "Milk" I was played by ... I can't remember her name (Wendy King.) She was on for about two seconds.

Q: So why didn't you do it yourself, like Tom Ammiano did?

A: Makeup can only do so much.