Brother Ben Elton Cox-Freedom Rider

 
Reverend Ben Elton Cox Sr. was born on June 19, 1931, in Whiteville, TN, the seventh of sixteen children. He first participated in civil rights demonstrations at the age of fifteen, protesting outside of an A&W Root Beer drive-in restaurant in Kankakee, Illinois. At the age of sixteen, Cox served as national field secretary for the NAACP, organizing youth chapters. Brother Cox dropped out of high school to help his family financially by shining shoes. However he understood the value of an education and later graduated from Joliet Township High School, an integrated school in Joliet, Illinois. Cox then attended Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, and graduated in 1954 with a major in sociology and a minor in history. After college, he attended Hood Seminary and finished his theological studies in 1957 at the Howard University School of Religion. Brother Cox moved to High Point, North Carolina, to become pastor of Pilgrim Congregational Church, and quickly became active in the community by serving on the High Point School Desegregation Committee in 1959. After the Greensboro Four's sit-in at Woolworth's in 1960, he organized a group of local high school students to participate in the Greensboro demonstrations. In 1961, Cox founded the first Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in High Point and was hired as the North Carolina Field Secretary.

Following a meeting with CORE director James Farmer, Brother Cox went to Washington, D.C., for training in nonviolent response to harassment and mistreatment. Cox was one of the thirteen original Freedom Riders, but before joining the Freedom Riders in 1961, he wrote his will and sent it to his parents. Though they were trained to be nonviolent, the riders were well aware of the violence and death threats that would follow them as long as they were part of the civil rights movement. The Freedom Riders set out to challenge the Jim Crow travel practices by riding various forms of public transportation in the South. In the first few days, the riders encountered only minor hostility, but in the second week several riders were severely beaten. Later, one of their buses was burned. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, called national attention to the total disregard by Southern States for the laws that declared segregation in interstate bus travel unconstitutional. 

As a Freedom Rider, Brother Cox got accustomed to driving at night in order to avoid racist attacks. Driving at high speeds on dark Southern roads, Cox said he would tell his colleagues to drive fast: "We can't outrun bullets."   

In December 1961, Brother Cox went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was arrested while leading a peaceful demonstration. In the resulting case, Cox v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court declared this use of the state's "breach of peace" law unconstitutional. Cox was also instrumental in getting many North Carolina public establishments to integrate, most notably the McDonald's franchises.

Brother Cox's involvement with the civil rights movement resulted in seventeen arrests and multiple death threats. He resigned from CORE in 1965 when black power advocates came to dominate the organization.

Later, he moved to Jackson, Tennessee, where he continues his work in civil rights, education, and the ministry

Brother Cox has Life Memberships with the NAACP and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.