The anger that led Lewis Zuchman and Luvaughn Brown to self-destructive moments as teenagers ultimately fueled their dedication to a movement.

Zuchman grew up white and Jewish in New York. He quit college and served time in jail before he was 19. Brown, an African-American in segregated Mississippi, ran away from an abusive family life and was prone to raise his fists in an instant.

They met as teenage Freedom Riders in the early 1960s, part of an historic non-violent movement that helped force the desegregation of the transportation facilities in the South.

"It was a reasonable way to fight what I wanted to fight all along, but didn't know how," said Brown, now 67.

Brown and Zuchman, 70, reminisced on Saturday at a discussion and film screening about the Freedom Rides at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. The event was part of programming associated with an exhibit of 82 mixed-media portraits of Freedom Riders by New York artist Charlotta Janssen....