Biography
Peter Sterling, a twenty-year-old Cornell undergraduate, was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, on May 30, 1961, for participating in the Freedom Rides and challenging segregation in interstate transportation — one of the arrests recorded by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and preserved in the Civil Rights Digital Library. The catalog establishes the arrest, the participation, and the individually identified police photograph, but not the court disposition, any transfer to Parchman, or the physical release date; those fields are unresolved pending county-jail, court, or penitentiary records.
Later accounts report that he was jailed and eventually freed after payment of a fine or outside intervention; the exact discharge date remains unresolved.
