Pauline Edythe Knight-Ofosu
Biography
Pauline Edythe Knight-Ofosu, a twenty-year-old Tennessee State University student from Nashville, was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, on May 28, 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.
She was later one of fourteen Freedom Riders expelled by Tennessee State University for participating.
The jointly filed petition individually lists this rider and explicitly states that all petitioners entered pleas of not guilty for their Hinds County Court trials de novo. The previously blank plea field records that county-trial plea only; it does not change the later disposition or establish physical custody dates.
