The Lesser-Known Freedom Rides

My name is Sarah Snyder (they/them) and I am a doctoral candidate in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in the Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature department. I have a background in history, critical theory, and comparative literature. I grew up on the ancestral homelands of the Susquehannock people in rural Pennsylvania, not very far from the shadow of Eastern State Penitentiary, perhaps the most historically significant site of carceral architecture in the western hemisphere. While in Minnesota for my doctoral work, I have taught literature and humanities courses in several MN men’s correctional facilities as a contracted faculty member. This experience, along with a childhood impacted by imprisonment, and coupled with my interest in the politics of literature and the practical application of theoretical study, led me to pursue a dissertation that looks to examine and think with what scholars and activists have termed “creative interventions,” or actions and processes that seek to reduce our identification with and reliance on the criminal justice system and the state. I follow Black feminist abolitionist thought in locating in the prison a system of control and political violence that seeks to insure white supremacy and the functioning of extractive global capital. As a teacher of incarcerated students and an instructor in the department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Minneapolis College, I am indebted to the work of theory and practice that empowers people to make connections and critically respond to state violence, including diffuse types of social death that emerge from the prison and its tendencies. As a trans person, my historical and ethical solidarities are with those surplus populations deemed criminal by empire and racial capitalism. I was the recipient of a RIDGS Graduate Research Partnering Program (GRPP) Fellowship in summer 2025.

In my dissertation, I look to the comparative contexts of anti-prison activism in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa, reading both prison writing and histories of anti-prison struggle for strategies of resilience and survival. With the RIDGS Graduate Research Partnering Program, I am able to work under the guidance of Dr. Rose Brewer (African American and African Studies) to develop a chapter and article on the history and strategy of the Black Panther Party’s prison abolition work, especially centering on their free rides to visit prisoners initiative. Using the resources at The Freedom Archives in Berkeley, the Dr. Huey P. Newton collection at Stanford, and the GLBT Archives in San Francisco, I have been able to witness—albeit through the gaps of the archive--the material struggle and relations of such programs. In his personal correspondence, Dr. Huey P. Newton described the free bus program as a method “designed to help expose the treachery of prison officials” and build power within communities of justice-impacted people.”

The bus to prison program was materially supported by women of the Party, such as Dr. JoNina Abron-Ervin (author of the recent text Driven by the Movement: Reports from the Black Power Era), and spurred many other such initiatives across the country, including solidarity programs for the loved ones of queer, trans, and PWA (people with AIDS) who were incarcerated. As a creative intervention, the Panthers saw this project as a type of “survival pending revolution,” and not necessarily in itself a revolutionary act. However, thinking with scholarship such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Abolition Geography, I offer that considering the material conditions under which the visits to prison took place, the act of going to prison (to visit a prisoner) is a gesture of compliant rebellion. These prison visits strengthened connections against the carceral state and mobilized infrastructure to serve the needs of the people.

Tellingly, several visitors described panicked responses from prison officials. For example, a Connections prison solidarity organization newsletter from August 1970 describes a visit to Soledad on August 15 of that year, relating how, upon the groups’ arrival, prison officials “freaked out” and “it was obvious the authorities never believed that the community was interested in the plight of their brothers–and no doubt they were frightened by the thought that so many people would come in and find out what was really happening.” From these responses, we might discern that the state’s claims to promote re-entry to the community were suspect and that Dr. Newton was correct in his insistence that the support of loved ones is a substantial determining factor in one’s ability to stay clear of the state upon release.

Alongside this political education in confronting state contradictions, we might think of the internal discourse, relationship-building, storytelling, and strategizing that took place on these rides, perhaps not so unlike other forms of historical Black resistance in the United States to utilize the bus as a conveyance to freedom. I am grateful to the RIDGS GRPP program for supporting the study of this work and fostering connections that help scholars look to historical possibilities and their role in present struggles.