For the past four years, Stetson Law School professor Robert Bickel, left, and Ernest "Rip" Patton have traveled with Stetson law and history students on Stetson's 2,000-mile Civil Rights Movement and the Law Tour through the Deep South.

DELAND In May 1961, Ernest "Rip" Patton Jr. was a young music major at Tennessee State University about to get on a bus and become part of history.

Tuesday night, a 72-year-old Patton stood before an overflow crowd of several hundred at Stetson University to tell of his work as a freedom rider.

The freedom riders were activists who defied segregation laws by riding in racially mixed groups in buses across the South and using the segregated facilities in depots. Though court decisions already had outlawed racial segregation in interstate transportation, Jim Crow laws stayed stubbornly often violently in force.

When Patton got ready for his trip, a bus had already been firebombed and riders had been beaten by mobs. Many thought the freedom rides had run their course.

"I knew about the beatings. I knew about the burning of the bus," he said.

Patton, lanky and slightly stooped, with the low, melodic voice of a man who loves to sing, told the students there was no question about joining the ride.

"That didn't stop us. We were on a mission. We were on a mission to make a difference. Not only for our generation for your generation as well."

Although his group escaped the threatened mob violence, Patton was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge in Jackson, Miss., at the lunch counter of a bus station.

Patton was sentenced to prison at Mississippi's Parchman State Prison Farm where he and other protesters were put in the maximum security section.

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Freedom rider tells Stetson students of historic protests