Biography
Orville B. Luster was an American Friends Service Committee activist who later served nearly twenty-five years as executive director of Youth for Service in San Francisco and was arrested at the Jackson Municipal Airport on July 21, 1961 with eight other riders — 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, while later County Court records establish the prosecution’s disposition. Any transfer to Parchman and the physical release date remain unresolved.
His years, about 1925 to 2005, are as the catalog records them.
Deputy clerk Robert Lilly’s sworn October 26, 1964 affidavit reports the following Hinds County Court disposition: County Court docket 12,733: directed verdict for the defendant, May 1, 1962. This is the legal disposition of the Freedom Ride prosecution, not evidence that physical custody continued until that date or that a jail release occurred then. Earlier municipal convictions, where already documented, are preserved as earlier events.
