James Breeden

James Pleasant Breeden (October 14, 1934 – September 20, 2020) was an American civil rights activist, Freedom Rider and Episcopal priest. In 1961 he was arrested along with 14 other Freedom Riders in Jackson, Mississippi for entering a segregated restaurant at a bus station. He later took part in the establishment of Freedom Schools during the "Stay Out for Freedom" movement in Boston, Massachusetts.

Early life and education James Pleasant Breeden was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 14, 1934, as the only child of Florence Beatrice Thomas and Pleasant George Breeden. His mother worked as a secretary and his father was a railroad dining car waiter. James was raised by his mother and his stepfather, Noah Smith. In his youth, James was a Boy Scout who reached the rank of Eagle Scout. He attended Harrison Elementary School and Lincoln Junior High School, and graduated from North High School in 1952 as class salutatorian.

James Breeden graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1956, where he was also a member of the Casque and Gauntlet senior society. During his time at Dartmouth, Breeden and the two other African-American men in his class were assigned a mandatory living situation together in the only room at the top of Topliff Hall, where they would often find racist notes left outside their door. Breeden said that they "didn't even consider protesting" because "We just accepted it as what one would expect at an institution like Dartmouth". Breeden was part of the debate team, but was asked to sit out of the national debate tournament which was held at the segregated Johns Hopkins University. He also attended a lecture by Thurgood Marshall who visited the campus as part of the "Great Issues" lecture series.

In 1959, Breeden received a certificate from the University of Geneva for his work at the Bossey Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches in Switzerland, and in 1960 he graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York with a Master of Divinity degree. Breeden was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church after moving to Boston the same year. He was a member of the episcopal diocese of Massachusetts, acting as a deacon, priest and canon until 1965.

In 1969, Breeden became an associate professor of the social policy program at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he received his doctorate in education (EdD) in 1972. While on a sabbatical the next year, he helped to establish a master's degree program in education administration at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. He was an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts from 1976 to 1978, and from 1978 to 1982 he was a senior officer in the Office of Planning and Policy in Boston Public Schools. In 1982 he became director of the Center for Law and Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was Dean of the Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College from 1984 until 1995, where he found the campus "radically changed" from his time as a student there. Breeden later said that "We knew what would happen when we went in and didn’t leave when ordered to, which is exactly what occurred." Breeden and the other Freedom Riders were charged with "action likely to cause a riot", which allowed police to work around the illegality of local Jim Crow laws. Breeden and the other freedom riders were held in a segregated jail in Jackson for 6 days before the charges against them were dismissed.

Personal life and death James Breeden married Jeanne Marie Savoye in 1958 in Geneva, Switzerland. They first met as undergraduates while Jeanne was attending Middlebury College, and they attended a student Christian conference in Boston where she was impressed by Breeden's speech. They were also students together at Union Theological Seminary, and they planned James's activism together.

James and Jeanne lived for a time in Leyden, Massachusetts. James Pleasant Breeden died from cancer at the age of 85 in his home in Easthampton, Massachusetts on September 20, 2020. He was survived by his wife Jeanne, his daughters Margaret and Johanna, his sons Frederick and Paul, and three grandchildren.