WITNESSES TO THE STRUGGLE ANGELENOS ADD THEIR VOICES TO THE STORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS.

Byline: Andrea Cavanaugh Staff Writer

Nita Jones still remembers the day in 1965 when a group of angry young black men tried to overturn the Los Angeles transit bus she was riding home from work.

Jones was trying to get off the bus at 48th Street and Vermont Avenue when the young men - angry that blacks were not being hired as bus drivers - started rocking the vehicle back and forth. The bus driver sped away, and let Jones and the other black passengers off several blocks away, where they had to make their way back through the mob.

Jones, now 72, recorded her story Friday at the Voices of Civil Rights Bus Tour, a 70-day, 35-city effort to gather the world's largest archive of stories from the civil-rights movement.

``We had been watching these kinds of things on television, but I never thought it would happen to me,'' Jones said. ``But it did.''

The tour, led by AARP in partnership with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Library of Congress, has recorded hundreds of firsthand accounts since it left Washington, D.C., on Aug. 3, AARP spokeswoman Charee Gillins said. Once completed, the archive will become part of the Library of Congress collection.

``The stories are pouring in,'' Gillins said. ``At first, people were hesitant. But once we explained that this will be part of history, there was a lot of interest.''

Monrovia resident Jackie Glover, 52, recalled an experience at a Dallas restaurant while eating with a group of friends. Glover, who is black, reached for a mint at the cash register and heard a white man shout at her, she said.

``I heard someone yell, 'Get out of there,'' Glover said. ``That was in 1982.''

Other experiences with racism were more subtle, Glover said. When her parents moved into their Monrovia home in 1952, they were the only black family on the block. Soon after, white families began moving from the neighborhood and were replaced by blacks.

``I didn't notice anything then,'' Glover said. ``It was looking back, as an adult, that I realized that when we moved in, they moved out.''

Zelda Hutcherson, 65, of Lynwood participated in the 1963 March on Washington and heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his dream about an America with equal rights for everyone.

But in many ways, that dream has not been realized, Hutcherson said.

``Integration has been a mixed blessing for black people,'' she said. ``We've never really had integration - we've had desegregation. We sit side by side, but we don't really share our cultures.''

Although many Americans equate the civil-rights movement with the South, people of all races fought blatant racial discrimination in Southern California, where people of color were faced with restrictive covenants and segregated schools, said Lamont Yeakey, a history professor at California State University, Los Angeles.

Recording the experiences of those who struggled for racial equality in the 1950s and '60s, especially in a city torn by the racial violence of the 1965 Watts Riots and the 1992 riots, is essential for future generations to understand the sacrifice of civil-rights pioneers, Yeakey said.

``Many of these seniors are passing from the scene,'' Yeakey said. ``They are the unsung heroes and heroines of their generations. Average people did extraordinary things.''

Andrea Cavanaugh, [phone]

andrea.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

IF YOU GO

--The Voices of Civil Rights Bus Tour will be in Los Angeles from noon to 8 p.m. today and Sunday at the Black Business Expo, being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St. Admission to the expo is $5. A community discussion on the past and future of civil rights will be held at 2 p.m. today.

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(1 -- 2) Nita Jones of Los Angeles, above, recalls her experiences during the civil-rights movement of the 1960s to a film crew working on a documentary for the Library of Congress.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer

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IF YOU GO (see text)