Many people remember the courageous civil rights activists who in the early 1960s risked their lives to challenge Jim Crow laws by riding racially integrated buses into the South. But few people know that southern universities expelled dozens of these young people for participating in what are now remembered as the "Freedom Rides."

To atone for these politically motivated expulsions, which denied activists their college degrees, at least six southern universities have granted former activists honorary degrees. Having denied these young people the opportunity of an education, it was the least they could do.

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