The Freedom Rider mug shots were collected by Mississippi's State Sovereignty Commission, which was established to protect segregation in perpetuity. The aim was probably to assure that if the Riders returned to the state, they could be run out on a rail, or perhaps blackmailed if they were later ashamed of their youth.
Who knows why the police photos went into the archives? Mississippi Sovereignty Commission employees were notoriously drunken incompetents (see numerous scholarly articles to that effect) and they needed to collect every shred of evidence of having shown up for work.
When the Sovereignty Commission's files were finally open to the public thanks to years of work by the ACLU, the evidence of their intimidation & spying & incompetence was astonishing.
And yet, even in the mug shots, the strength of character & idealism of the Riders showed through. Photographer Eric Etheridge made it his mission to track down those of the 500 Riders who were still alive, and persuaded many to allow him to do new, artistic, penetrating "mug shots" for posterity.
My regret is that the interviews which went with the portraits were so curtailed by the art book format. I also feel that the intensity of his approach made many people look more forbidding than they are in a more natural setting. Apparently Etheridge took dozens of photos with each interview and chose the one that was most awkward, or suited his own sensibility. They are unkind, which most of his subjects are not.
This is a valuable, powerful & revealing book, which presents to the public some of the people who have not been celebrated but who made the history while others got the kudos.
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