In Memorium: Pauline Knight Ofosu - Higher Education: To most students and teachers on campuses across the nation, the name Pauline Knight Ofosu would draw a blank stare if they were asked to identify her. Such is the fate of people who make history that is forgotten generations later.
That ignorance of contemporary American history did not cause Ofosu to feel that the efforts of her and her one-time college classmates in the 1960s were in vain. They knew they had a profound impact of America history—forever.
Pauline Knight was a junior at Nashville’s Tennessee A & I State College (TSU) when, in1961, she joined a group of TSU classmates and students from other colleges to peacefully protest racial segregation on buses like Greyhound Trailways and in their bus stations.
Known as the Freedom Riders, the students cut classes to board the interstate buses in Nashville destined for New Orleans and points in between to test whether state and local governments were honoring a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring racial discrimination in interstate commerce.
