According to a flashback, in his early 20s (20 years old in 1959) he protested against Martin Luther King Jr.'s marches during the civil rights movement and would occasionally throw bricks at King. Another flashback scene shows Ruckus serving on a Tennessee jury in 1957 (making him a minimum of 70 years old in 2009, although this flashback is not consistent with the show's continuity) that helped convict a blind black man of killing three white girls. In spite of being blind, the African American man supposedly shot the three with a Winchester rifle from about 50 yards away. Ruckus is the only black person on the otherwise all-white jury in a Jim Crow courtroom. During his first encounter with the Freeman family, Ruckus sings "Don't Trust Them New Niggas Over There" in the pilot episode, though he socializes freely with the Freemans thereafter.