Freedom Riders

Africans and African Americans were treated as second-class citizens through the institution of slavery in the United States, and later the Jim Crow laws that legalized racial discrimination. Instituted during the Reconstruction period following the U.S. Civil War and emancipation of slaves, these laws served to systematically oppress African Americans for another 100 years. The civil rights movement began in 1954, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which outlawed separate but equal education in order to end racial inequality in the United States and improve the conditions of blacks.

A central but often overlooked part of the civil rights movement are the Freedom Rides, a term that refers to the nearly seven-months-long activist campaign to desegregate interstate bus depots and train stations in the southern United States. Approximately 400 men and women known as Freedom Riders took part in this interracial movement, risking life and limb and enduring jail time in order to create a more equal world.

The first Freedom Ride actually predates the civil rights movement, dating back to 1947 when members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation joined to challenge Morgan v. Virginia, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that desegregated interstate travel on buses and trains. An interracial group of 16 blacks and whites took a bus ride through the upper southern states to test the ruling's enforcement. Known as the Journey of Reconciliation, this first Freedom Ride garnered little attention. Thirteen years later, the tactic was revived after the 1960 Boynton v. Virginia ruling extended Morgan v. Virginia to the desegregation of all interstate terminal accommodations (depots, restaurants) and James Farmer, the national director of CORE, saw an opportunity.

The purpose of the 1961 Freedom Rides was to protest the practice of segregation and actualize the decision in Boynton v. Virginia. Using the Journey of Reconciliation as its model, this time an interracial group would board southbound buses in order to integrate station restrooms, waiting areas, and restaurants. During scheduled stops, the Freedom Riders would depart the bus and enter “white” and “colored” areas contrary to where they were supposed to go, or would sit together in segregated areas. In contrast to other acts of civil disobedience, the Freedom Riders were not breaking a single law. Instead, they hoped their acts of integration would incite southern racists to react, causing the Justice Department to uphold the law. Since CORE members practiced the Gandhian activist principles of nonviolence, they would not fight back if attacked.

CORE began the process by alerting the appropriate people of the group's upcoming plans to commit civil disobedience. In April 1961 they sent formal letters to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the Justice Department, President John F. Kennedy, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They also notified the two bus companies, Greyhound and Trailways, of the upcoming Freedom Ride. These letters were never answered. A few weeks later, the group gathered on May 3, 1961, at a Chinese restaurant in Washington, D.C., to discuss the plan. Participant John Lewis and other attendees would later refer to [Page 911]this dinner as “the last supper,” as the following morning they were embarking into the unknown.

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