OXFORD — At the end of a NASCAR event, the winning driver takes a victory lap around the track to accept cheers from fans. There’s also at least a modicum of gloating as the vanquished look on.

When Freedom Riders have a reunion starting May 22 in Jackson, there will be a tendency to think of it as a victory lap, too. But at least one of the riders, Hank Thomas, says that will be completely wrong.

“It’s about reconciliation,” he told students while appearing on a panel with fellow “agitators” visiting the University of Mississippi.

Here’s the context: In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case (Boynton v. Virginia) that racial segregation in interstate transportation was unconstitutional. Nothing happened. Across the South, Greyhound, Trailways and other bus stations continued to follow state laws requiring separate waiting and ticketing areas for whites and blacks, with facilities for blacks uniformly inferior and unkempt. Once aboard, whites and blacks were not allowed to sit near each other, also as a matter of state law.

The Congress of Racial Equality and other groups faced the reality that a Supreme Court opinion is a piece of paper unless it’s enforced. While Congress and the president, John F. Kennedy, might have agreed with the ruling, they weren’t doing anything about it.

Young people, mostly college students, were recruited, trained and warned of the dangers they’d face during their nonviolent test of the decision. Thomas, from Florida, was 19 and as a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., didn’t meet the 21-year age requirement. His roommate had a ticket, though, and Thomas said he copped it when his roommate became ill just before the departure date.

CORE organizers didn’t expect the political or law enforcement establishment in Southern states to capitulate, but they did hope for federal support.

Today we think of many signal events in the Civil Rights Movement as spur-of-the-moment. Many, such as Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a municipal bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, were. Others were carefully orchestrated.

The Freedom Riders were anticipated and summarily arrested in North Carolina and South Carolina without rampant violence. That changed near Anniston, Ala., where a Greyhound was stopped, its tires slashed and the vehicle firebombed.

Hank Thomas was on that bus. He remembers the faces in the crowd, especially those muscling to block the door to assure the passengers were burned alive. He said only an exploding fuel tank caused the mob to move back long enough for the riders to escape. Other sources say it was an Alabama state trooper who forced the mob away from the bus at gunpoint.

There were more beatings in Montgomery. Pleas came from all directions for the riders to abandon the quest. They refused and rode into Mississippi on May 24, 1961, with state Troopers and Mississippi National Guard escorts all the way to Lamar Street in Jackson. They were arrested one-by-one as they entered the bus station. Most, black and white, male and female, Gentile, Jew and unchurched, were taken straight to Parchman for an impromptu “scared straight” series of events.

The state’s strategy was to handle these misguided youths with as little muss and fuss as possible and then go back to segregation as usual. Thomas said the riders’ response was to keep coming in greater numbers “to fill up every prison and jail in Mississippi, if necessary.”

Now a large and imposing man, Thomas, who with his family owns several hotel and restaurant franchises in Georgia, has every right to a victory lap for his role in slaying Jim Crow, every right to say, “Hey, look at me. I’m a hero of the people.”

And he’s flat-out not interested.

After the freedom rides, he became the third generation in his family to serve in the army of a nation where he, his father and grandfather were denied rights equal to others. At Ole Miss, he wore the ribbons and medals, including the Purple Heart, he earned in Vietnam.

Reconciliation is not the same as forgive and forget. Reconciliation is admitting human failure, in this case admitting being on the wrong side of justice, being accepted for facing up to it and then moving forward. It’s a healing, with full knowledge scars remain.

Fifty years have passed. Thomas, a grandfather, is 69. He will be with others also approaching Jackson also with hands extended in the spirit of common experience.

It’s not a victory lap. His reward will be an embrace.

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Charlie Mitchell is a Mississippi journalist. Write to him at Box 1, University, MS 38677, or e-mail cmitchell43@yahoo.com.