Two Feet Newsletter

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Our Diocesan Social Action Office's Two Feet Newsletter is distributed monthly via email.
Our monthly publication contains news, information, and calls to action.  

Social Action in Action profile
Tom Streveler 
A brush with Civil Rights history

By Barb Arland-Fye
March - 2026

Tom Streveler
Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace, ClintonTom Streveler was among four college friends, two Black and two White, who experienced a brush with Civil Rights history when they headed to school in a single car, a trip that included a leg through Louisiana and Mississippi. It was 1961, the year of the Freedom Rides, when Black and White people challenged segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals. Mobs and Ku Klux Klan members attacked the freedom riders, beating some of them severely, despite their nonviolent approach to seeking integration, according to Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.

“It seemed terribly odd that Blacks and Whites weren’t allowed to be in the same vehicle. We were caught up in the Freedom Rides experience – (but) we weren’t part of it,” recalls Tom, now 84 and an active member of the Justice and Peace Commission of Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace Parish in Clinton.   Click here to read more...