Freedom Rides, 1961

During the summer and fall of 1961, approximately 400 citizens enacted nonviolent direct action protests challenging local segregation laws that defied a 1960 [Page 583]Supreme Court ruling extending the desegregation of public interstate transportation to include bus terminals and facilities. Their strategy was to demand full access to buses and terminal facilities, knowing that doing so would provoke a violent reaction from southern whites and force the federal government to enforce the law. The Freedom Rides marked the first major confrontation between the Kennedy administration and southern segregationists and displayed President Kennedy's reluctance to act on civil rights issues. Despite numerous violent encounters, severe injuries, and numerous arrests, the Freedom Rides were ultimately seen as a great success. The rides dramatized the violent racial dynamic in the South, expanded the recognition and influence of key civil rights organizations, and reinvigorated the movement.

A group of Freedom Riders from Tennessee stands at the door of a Greyhound bus in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 19, 1961. Drivers refused to take the racially mixed group out, and after a wait of about two hours the college students tried to board another bus going the same way. The second bus was also cancelled.

Source: AP Photo.

The Freedom Rides were modeled after an earlier protest called the Journey of Reconciliation. In June of 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against segregation of interstate public transportation in Morgan v. Virginia. On April 9, 1947, eight black and eight white male members of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Workers Defense League left Washington, D.C., and traveled through the upper South to test compliance with the court's decision. Plans were made for a women's journey for the following year and a ride through the Deep South in 1954, but neither materialized.

In 1955, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ruled in Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that separate but equal seating on interstate public transportation violated the Interstate Commerce Act. Despite both the 1946 Morgan and the 1955 Keys rulings, interstate public transportation in the South remained segregated. In 1960, the Supreme Court found in Boynton v. Virginia that in addition to interstate bus travel, which was established in the Morgan case, segregated public transportation facilities violated the Interstate Commerce Act.

In the wake of the success of the sit-in movement, James Farmer, CORE's newly elected national director, decided to reenact the journey and test the new ruling. On May 4, 1961, seven black and six white men left Washington, D.C., on two buses—one Trailways and one Greyhound—challenging segregation on both major carriers. The riders hoped to reach New Orleans in time to celebrate the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17. The initial cadre included several notable civil rights activists, including James Farmer; James Peck, a white CORE activist and the only rider who had participated in the Journey of Reconciliation; and 21-year-old John Lewis of the Nashville Group and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The group's first encounter with violence occurred in Rock Hill, South Carolina; John Lewis and another rider were beaten, while a third was arrested after using a white-only restroom. In Atlanta the riders dined with Martin Luther King, Jr., who cautioned them of the danger they would face in Alabama.

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