Hezekiah "Heck" Watkins, born in Wisconsin and raised in Mississippi, is the youngest Freedom Rider and has been a civil rights activist since the early 1960s. After being arrested at age 13, he began organizing boycotts and registering Black voters in Mississippi; he was arrested over 100 times during those years, ordinarily with unnecessary force. In 2019, he published Pushing Forward: The Story of Mississippi's Youngest Freedom Rider, a book about his experiences during the civil rights movement. Hezekiah lives in Jackson, MS and spends his days working at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
