Prelude The Freedom Riders were inspired by the 1947
Journey of Reconciliation, led by
Bayard Rustin and
George Houser and co-sponsored by the
Fellowship of Reconciliation and the then-fledgling
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Like the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Journey of Reconciliation was intended to test an earlier
Supreme Court ruling that banned
racial discrimination in interstate travel. Rustin,
Igal Roodenko,
Joe Felmet and Andrew Johnnson, were arrested and sentenced to serve on a
chain gang in
North Carolina for violating local
Jim Crow laws regarding segregated seating on public transportation. The first Freedom Ride began on May 4, 1961. Led by CORE Director
James Farmer, 13 young riders (seven black, six white, including but not limited to
John Lewis (21),
Genevieve Hughes (28), Mae Frances Moultrie, Joseph Perkins, Charles Person (18), Ivor Moore,
William E. Harbour (19),
Joan Trumpauer Mullholland (19), and
Ed Blankenheim), left Washington, DC, on
Greyhound (from the
Greyhound Terminal) and
Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through
Virginia, the Carolinas,
Georgia,
Alabama, and
Mississippi, ending in
New Orleans, Louisiana, where a civil rights rally was planned. Many of the Riders were sponsored by CORE and
SNCC with 75% of the Riders between 18 and 30 years old. A diverse group of volunteers came from 39 states, and were from different economic classes and racial backgrounds. Most were college students and received training in nonviolent tactics. The Freedom Riders' tactics were to have at least one interracial pair sitting in adjoining seats, and at least one black rider sitting up front, where seats had been reserved for white customers by local custom throughout the South. The rest of the team would sit scattered throughout the rest of the bus. One rider would abide by the South's segregation rules in order to avoid arrest and to contact CORE and arrange bail for those who were arrested. Only minor trouble was encountered in Virginia and North Carolina, but
John Lewis was attacked in
Rock Hill,
South Carolina. More than 300 Riders were arrested in
Charlotte, North Carolina;
Winnsboro, South Carolina; and
Jackson, Mississippi. "Yet the Freedom Rides, in plural, was just the beginning. The Alabama attacks, coupled with the Mississippi arrests, inspired multiple small bands of civil rights supporters from all over the continental United States to head southward too," explains Arsenault.
Mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham (2017 photo) The
Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner,
Bull Connor, together with Police Sergeant Tom Cook (an avid
Ku Klux Klan supporter), organized violence against the Freedom Riders with local Klan chapters. The pair made plans to bring the Ride to an end in Alabama. They assured
Gary Thomas Rowe, an
FBI informer and member of Eastview Klavern #13 (the most violent Klan group in Alabama), that the mob would have fifteen minutes to attack the Freedom Riders without any arrests being made. The plan was to allow an initial assault in
Anniston with a final assault taking place in Birmingham.
Anniston On Sunday, May 14, 1961, Mother's Day, in
Anniston, Alabama, a mob of
Klansmen, some still in church attire, attacked the first of the two Greyhound buses. The driver tried to leave the station, but he was blocked until KKK members slashed its tires. The mob forced the crippled bus to stop several miles outside town and then threw a
firebomb into it. As the bus burned, the mob held the doors shut, intending to burn the riders to death. Sources disagree, but either an exploding
fuel tank The roadside site in Anniston and the downtown Greyhound station were preserved as part of the
Freedom Riders National Monument in 2017. Some injured riders were taken to Anniston Memorial Hospital. That night, the hospitalized Freedom Riders, most of whom had been refused care, were removed from the hospital at 2 am, because the staff feared the mob outside the hospital. The local civil rights leader Rev.
Fred Shuttlesworth organized several cars of black citizens to rescue the injured Freedom Riders in defiance of the white supremacists. The black people were under the leadership of
Colonel Stone Johnson and were openly armed as they arrived at the hospital, protecting the Freedom Riders from the mob. When the Trailways bus reached Anniston and pulled in at the terminal an hour after the Greyhound bus was burned, it was boarded by eight Klansmen. They beat the Freedom Riders and left them semi-conscious in the back of the bus.. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed. As the riders exited the bus, they were beaten by the mob with baseball bats, iron
pipes and
bicycle chains. Among the attacking Klansmen was
Gary Thomas Rowe Jr., an FBI informant. White Freedom Riders were singled out for especially frenzied beatings;
James Peck required more than 50 stitches to the wounds in his head. Peck was taken to
Carraway Methodist Medical Center, which refused to treat him; he was later treated at
Jefferson Hillman Hospital. On the afternoon of that same Sunday, the second bus arrived at Birmingham's Trailways station, with James Peck as the captain of this leg. Peck, a 46-year-old descendant of the
Peck & Peck New York retail family and one of the two Harvard alums on the ride, had participated in CORE'S 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, where he was surprised by the level of tolerance towards integration among drivers and passengers. However, fourteen years later, he faced a hostile group of white men in sports shirts, who carried lead pipes hidden in paper bags. Peck challenged them, declaring that they would have to kill him before hurting his fellow Freedom Riders. Despite his brave words, he was attacked and severely beaten by five men in an alley. The attackers used a Coke bottle, which was a typical weapon for southern vigilantes. Peck lost consciousness within seconds and needed 53 stitches to close his exposed skull. Meanwhile, inside the station, the Klansmen violently assaulted the Freedom Riders and anyone else who tried to stop them, including a news photographer who arrived at the scene. Despite the violence suffered and the threat of more to come, the Freedom Riders intended to continue their journey. Kennedy had arranged an escort for the Riders in order to get them to
Montgomery, Alabama, safely. However, radio reports told of a mob awaiting the riders at the bus terminal, as well as on the route to Montgomery. The Greyhound clerks told the Riders that their drivers were refusing to drive any Freedom Riders anywhere.
Nashville Student Movement continuation Diane Nash, a
Nashville college student who was a leader of the
Nashville Student Movement and
SNCC, believed that if Southern violence were allowed to halt the Freedom Rides the movement would be set back years. She pushed to find replacements to resume the rides. On May 17, a new set of riders, 10 students from Nashville who were active in the Nashville Student Movement, took a bus to Birmingham, where they were arrested by Bull Connor and jailed. They immediately returned to Birmingham.
Mob violence in Montgomery In answer to SNCC's call, Freedom Riders from across the Eastern US joined
John Lewis and
Hank Thomas, the two young SNCC members of the original Ride, who had remained in Birmingham. On May 19, they attempted to resume the ride, but, terrified by the howling mob surrounding the bus depot, the drivers refused. Harassed and besieged by the mob, the riders waited all night for a bus. On the morning of May 20, the Freedom Ride resumed, with the bus carrying the riders traveling toward Montgomery at 90 miles an hour, protected by a contingent of the
Alabama State Highway Patrol. , site of the May 20, 1961 violence, is preserved as the
Freedom Rides Museum (2011 photo) The Highway Patrol abandoned the bus and riders at the Montgomery city limits. At the
Montgomery Greyhound station on South Court Street, a white mob awaited. They beat the Freedom Riders with baseball bats and iron pipes. The local police allowed the beatings to go on uninterrupted. Seigenthaler, a Justice Department official, was beaten and left unconscious lying in the street. Ambulances refused to take the wounded to the hospital. Local black residents rescued them, and a number of the Freedom Riders were hospitalized. On the following night, Sunday, May 21, more than 1,500 people packed into Reverend
Ralph Abernathy's
First Baptist Church to honor the Freedom Riders. Among the speakers were Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr., who had led the 1955–1956
Montgomery bus boycott, Rev.
Fred Shuttlesworth, and
James Farmer. Outside, a mob of more than 3,000 white people attacked the black attendees, with a handful of the
United States Marshals Service protecting the church from assault and fire bombs. With city and state police making no effort to restore order, the civil rights leaders appealed to the President for protection. President Kennedy threatened to intervene with federal troops if the governor would not protect the people. Governor Patterson forestalled that by finally ordering the
Alabama National Guard to disperse the mob, and the Guard reached the church in the early morning. Lafayette also was interviewed by the BBC in 2011 and told about these events in an episode broadcast on the radio on August 31, 2011, in commemoration of the Freedom Rides. The Alabama National Guard finally arrived in the early morning to disperse the mob and safely escorted all the people from the church.
Into Mississippi was a CORE activist arrested in the Trailways bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 14, 1961. The next day, Monday, May 22, more Freedom Riders arrived in Montgomery to continue the rides through the South and replace the wounded riders still in the hospital. Behind the scenes, the Kennedy administration arranged a deal with the governors of Alabama and Mississippi, where the governors agreed that state police and the National Guard would protect the Riders from mob violence. In return, the federal government would not intervene to stop local police from arresting Freedom Riders for violating segregation ordinances when the buses arrived at the depots. Surrounded by Highway Patrol and the National Guard, the buses arrived in Jackson without incident, but the riders were immediately arrested when they tried to use the white-only facilities at the Tri-State Trailways depot. The third bus arrived at the
Jackson Greyhound station early on May 28, and its Freedom Riders were arrested. In Montgomery, the next round of Freedom Riders, including the
Yale University chaplain
William Sloane Coffin, Gaylord Brewster Noyce, and southern ministers Shuttlesworth, Abernathy,
Wyatt Tee Walker, and others were similarly arrested for violating local segregation ordinances.
Nashville Student Movement leader
James Lawson, who played a prominent role in coordinating the Freedom Rides, was among the first to be arrested in Jackson. While in Jackson, Freedom Riders received support from local grassroots civil rights organization Womanpower Unlimited, which raised money and collected toiletries, soap, candy and magazines for the imprisoned protesters. Upon Freedom Riders' release, Womanpower members would provide places for them to bathe while offering them clothes and food. Founded by
Clarie Collins Harvey, the group was considered instrumental in the success of the Freedom Riders. Freedom Rider
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland said the Womanpower members "were like angels supplying us with just little simple necessities." The
Soviet Union criticized the United States for its racism and the attacks on the Riders. Nonetheless, international outrage about the widely covered events and racial violence created pressure on American political leaders. On May 29, 1961, Attorney General Kennedy sent a petition to the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) asking it to comply with the bus-desegregation ruling it had issued in November 1955, in
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. That ruling had explicitly repudiated the concept of "
separate but equal" in the realm of interstate bus travel. Chaired by
South Carolina Democrat J. Monroe Johnson, the ICC had failed to implement its own ruling.
Summer escalation and Reverend Petty D. McKinney arrested in
Tallahassee, Florida, on June 16, 1961. CORE, SNCC, and the
SCLC rejected any "cooling off period". They formed a Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee to keep the Rides rolling through June, July, August, and September. most of them converging on Jackson, where every Rider was arrested, more than 300 in total. An unknown number were arrested in other Southern towns. It is estimated that almost 450 people participated in one or more Freedom Rides. About 75% were male, and the same percentage were under the age of 30, with about equal participation from black and white citizens. During the summer of 1961, Freedom Riders also campaigned against other forms of
racial discrimination. They sat together in segregated restaurants, lunch counters and hotels. This was especially effective when they targeted large companies, such as hotel chains. Fearing boycotts in the North, the hotels began to desegregate their businesses.
Tallahassee In mid-June, a group of Freedom Riders had scheduled to end their ride in
Tallahassee, Florida, with plans to fly home from the
Tallahassee Municipal Airport. They were provided a police escort to the airport from the city's bus facilities. At the airport, they decided to eat at the
Savarin restaurant that was marked "For Whites Only". The owners decided to close rather than serve the mixed group of Freedom Riders. Although the restaurant was privately owned, it was leased from the county government. Canceling their plane reservations, the Riders decided to wait until the restaurant re-opened so they could be served. They waited until 11:00 pm that night and returned the following day. During this time, hostile crowds gathered, threatening violence. On June 16, 1961, the Freedom Riders were arrested in Tallahassee for unlawful assembly. That arrest and subsequent trial became known as
Dresner v. City of Tallahassee, named for Rabbi
Israel S. Dresner, one of the first Freedom Riders, also arrested with the group. The Riders were convicted of unlawful assembly by the Municipal Court of Tallahassee, and the convictions were affirmed in the
Florida Circuit Court of the Second Judicial District. The convictions were appealed to the
US Supreme Court in 1963, which refused to hear the case based on jurisdictional reasons. In 1964, the
Tallahassee 10 protesters returned to the city to serve brief jail sentences. . They were arrested by local police for breach of the peace . Although they were convicted and fined, the riders were released after agreeing to leave Arkansas .
Monroe, North Carolina, and Robert F. Williams In early August, SNCC staff members
James Forman and Paul Brooks, with the support of
Ella Baker, began planning a Freedom Ride in solidarity with
Robert F. Williams. Williams was an extremely militant and controversial NAACP chapter president for
Monroe, North Carolina. After making the public statement that he would "meet violence with violence," (since the federal government would not protect his community from racial attacks) he had been suspended by the NAACP national board over the objections of Williams' local membership. Williams continued his work against segregation however, but now had massive opposition in both black and white communities. He was also facing repeated attempts on his life because of it. Some SNCC staff members sympathized with the idea of armed self-defense, although many on the ride to Monroe saw this as an opportunity to prove the superiority of Gandhian nonviolence over the use of force. Forman was among those who were still supportive of Williams. The Freedom Riders in Monroe were brutally attacked by white supremacists with the approval of local police. On August 27, James Forman – SNCC's Executive Secretary – was struck unconscious with the butt of a rifle and taken to jail with numerous other demonstrators. Police and white supremacists roamed the town shooting at black civilians, who returned the gunfire. Robert F. Williams fortified the black neighborhood against attack and in the process briefly detained a white couple who had gotten lost there. The police accused Williams of kidnapping and called in the state militia and FBI to arrest him, in spite of the couple being quickly released. Certain he would be lynched, Williams fled and eventually found refuge in
Cuba. Movement lawyers, eager to disengage from the situation, successfully urged the Freedom Riders not to practice the normal "jail-no bail" strategy in Monroe. Local officials, also apparently eager to de-escalate, found demonstrators guilty but immediately suspended their sentences. One Freedom Rider however, John Lowry, went on trial for the kidnapping case, along with several associates of Robert F. Williams, including
Mae Mallory. Monroe legal defense committees were popular around the country, but ultimately Lowry and Mallory served prison sentences. In 1965, their convictions were vacated due to the exclusion of black citizens from the jury selection.
Jackson, Mississippi, and Pierson v. Ray On September 13, 1961, a group of 15
Episcopal priests, including three black priests and twelve white priests, entered the
Jackson, Mississippi Trailways bus terminal. Upon entering the coffee shop, they were stopped by two policemen, who asked them to leave. After refusing to leave, all 15 were arrested and jailed for
breach of peace, under a now-repealed section of the
Mississippi code § 2087.5 that "makes guilty of a misdemeanor anyone who congregates with others in a public place under circumstances such that a breach of the peace may be occasioned thereby, and refuses to move on when ordered to do so by a police officer." The group included 35-year-old
Reverend Robert L Pierson. After the case against the priests was dismissed on May 21, 1962, they sought damages against the police under the
Civil Rights Act of 1871. Their claims were ultimately rejected in the
United States Supreme Court case
Pierson v. Ray (1967), which held that the police were protected by a new court-created legal doctrine,
qualified immunity.
Resolution and legacy By September it had been more than three months since the filing of the petition by Robert Kennedy. CORE and SNCC leaders made tentative plans for a mass demonstration known as the "Washington Project". This would mobilize hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nonviolent demonstrators to the capital city to apply pressure on the ICC and the Kennedy administration. The idea was pre-empted when the ICC finally issued the necessary orders just before the end of the month. The new policies went into effect on November 1, 1961, six years after the ruling in
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. After the new ICC rule took effect, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains; "white" and "colored" signs were removed from the terminals; racially-segregated drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms serving interstate customers were consolidated; and the lunch counters began serving all customers, regardless of race. The widespread violence in response to the Freedom Rides sent shock waves through American society. People were worried that the Rides were evoking widespread social disorder and racial divergence, an opinion supported and strengthened in many communities by the press. The press in white communities condemned the
direct action approach that CORE was taking, while some of the national press negatively portrayed the Riders as provoking unrest. At the same time, the Freedom Rides established great credibility with black and white people throughout the United States and inspired many to engage in direct action for civil rights. Perhaps most significantly, the actions of the Freedom Riders from the North, who faced danger on behalf of southern black citizens, impressed and inspired the many black people living in
rural areas throughout the South. They formed the backbone of the wider civil rights movement, engaging in
voter registration and other activities. Southern black activists generally organized around their churches, the center of their communities and a base of moral strength. The Freedom Riders helped inspire participation in subsequent civil rights campaigns, including voter registration throughout the South,
freedom schools, and the
Black Power movement. At the time, most black Southerners had been unable to register to vote, due to state constitutions, laws and practices that had effectively
disfranchised them since the turn of the 20th century. For instance, white administrators supervised reading comprehension and literacy tests that even highly educated black people could not pass. In Australia, the American Freedom Riders inspired the 1965
Freedom Ride in New South Wales. This event brought attention to the significant social and legal discrimination against
Aboriginal Australians in regional, rural and remote areas of
New South Wales, including segregation from public facilities and private businesses. ==List of Freedom Rides==