https://www.npr.org/2022/01/16/ [login to see] /israel-dresner-rabbi-freedom-riders-martin-luther-king-dies
The funeral for a New Jersey man on Sunday comes at a most poignant moment for his family, as it coincides with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Rabbi Israel "Sy" Dresner was one of the earliest Freedom Riders in the 1960s and was close with King.
Dresner died Thursday of cancer at the age of 92.
Dresner was arrested four times in the early '60s during the time he spent as a Freedom Rider. He used to leave his home in northern New Jersey, sometimes driving all night long, to join the nonviolent protests against segregation in the South.
In 1961, he traveled to Tallahassee, Fla., and was arrested and jailed after he and a group of Blacks and whites tried to integrate an airport restaurant. He was later the named petitioner in a legal case challenging the arrest that made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.