The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. They called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs attack them without intervention.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the subsequent Freedom Rides, but some were also organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides, beginning in 1961, followed dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities.
The Supreme Court's decision in Boynton supported the right of interstate travelers to disregard local segregation ordinances. Southern local and state police considered the actions of the Freedom Riders to be criminal and arrested them in some locations. In some localities, such as Birmingham, Alabama, the police cooperated with Ku Klux Klan chapters and other white people opposing the actions, and allowed mobs to attack the riders.
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,[8]William E. Harbour (19), Joan Trumpauer Mullholland (19), and Ed Blankenheim),[9] 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.[citation needed] A diverse group of volunteers came from 39 states, and were from different economic classes and racial backgrounds.[10] Most were college students and received training in nonviolent tactics.[11]
The Freedom Riders' tactics for their journey were to have at least one interracial pair sitting in adjoining seats, and at least one black rider sitting up front, where seats under segregation 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.
The Freedom Rides were mostly focused on events that occurred during the spring and summer of 1961. However, the idea of an interracial bus ride through the South, at a time when racial segregation was mandated in public transportation, originated in 1947. Bayard Rustin and George Houser, who were part of a civil rights organization called the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), came up with a plan to test whether southern long-distance buses were following a 1946 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited segregation on interstate travel.[12]
"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.[12]
The riders in 1961 successfully completed their journey through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. However, they encountered violent and horrific situations in Alabama. A white segregationist mob attacked and burned one of the two buses they were traveling in outside Anniston. The second group of riders faced violence from Ku Klux Klansmen in Birmingham, while the city police deliberately held back.[12]
The Freedom Rides had two important outcomes. Firstly, due to the pressure from Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which had regulatory power over interstate buses and terminals, declared an end to racial segregation in all waiting rooms and lunch counters, effective from November 1, 1961. Although not everyone immediately followed this rule, Arsenault points out that this directive sent a clear message to southern whites that desegregation of other institutions was likely to happen soon.[13]
The Greyhound bus attack site (center) is south of Anniston on Old Birmingham Highway (right). SeeFreedom Riders National Monument (2017 photo)Violence at the Anniston Trailways Terminal, at 901 Noble St., is commemorated with a mural (2012 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 FBIinformer[14] 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.[15] The mob forced the crippled bus to stop several miles outside town and then threw a firebomb into it.[16][17] 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[16] or an undercover state investigator who was brandishing a revolver caused the mob to retreat, and the riders escaped the bus.[18] The mob beat the riders after they got out. Warning shots which were fired into the air by highway patrolmen were the only thing which prevented the riders from being lynched.[16] 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.[19] That night, the hospitalized Freedom Riders, most of whom had been refused care, were removed from the hospital at 2am, 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.[20]
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.[16]
Birmingham
On Sunday morning, May 14, the Freedom Riders embarked on a journey from Atlanta in two buses that also accommodated regular passengers. However, the first bus was unable to reach Birmingham as it was attacked by a group of 200 men. The attackers hurled a firebomb through a rear window of the bus, and the Freedom Riders were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were mostly ignored until being instructed to leave. The bus was left completely destroyed, and this became the first memorable image of the Freedom Ride.[21]
A mob of white people beat Freedom Riders in Birmingham, Alabama. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed.
When the bus arrived in Birmingham, it was attacked by a mob of KKK members[15] aided and abetted by police under the orders of Commissioner Connor.[22] 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, 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.[23] Peck was taken to Carraway Methodist Medical Center, which refused to treat him; he was later treated at Jefferson Hillman Hospital.[24][25]
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.[21]
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.[15]
New Orleans
Recognizing that their efforts had already called national attention to the civil rights cause and wanting to get to the rally in New Orleans, the Riders decided to abandon the rest of the bus ride and fly directly to New Orleans from Birmingham. When they first boarded the plane, all passengers had to exit because of a bomb threat.[15]
Upon arriving in New Orleans, local tensions prevented normal accommodations—after which Norman C. Francis, president of Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA), decided to house them on campus in secret at St Michael's Hall, a dormitory.[27]
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.[22]
The students kept their spirits up in jail by singing freedom songs. Out of frustration, Connor drove them back up to the Tennessee line and dropped them off, saying, "I just couldn't stand their singing."[28] 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.[22]
Under intense public pressure from the Kennedy administration, Greyhound was forced to provide a driver. After direct intervention by Byron White of the Attorney General's office, Alabama Governor John Patterson reluctantly promised to protect the bus from KKK mobs and snipers on the road between Birmingham and Montgomery.[29] 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.
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.[22] Again, white Freedom Riders were singled out for particularly brutal beatings. Reporters and news photographers were attacked first and their cameras destroyed, but one reporter took a photo later of Jim Zwerg in the hospital, showing how he was beaten and bruised.[30] 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.[22]
Mugshot of Miller G. Green when arrested for being a part of The Freedom Rides
In a commemorative Op-Ed piece in 2011, Bernard Lafayette remembered the mob breaking windows of the church with rocks and setting off tear gas canisters. He recounted heroic action by King. After learning that black taxi drivers were arming and forming a group to rescue the people inside, he worried that more violence would result. He selected ten volunteers, who promised non-violence, to escort him through the white mob, which parted to let King and his escorts pass as they marched two by two. King went out to the black drivers and asked them to disperse, to prevent more violence. King and his escorts formally made their way back inside the church, unmolested.[31] 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.[32][33]
Into Mississippi
George Raymond Jr. was a CORE activist arrested in the Trailways bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 14, 1961.Some Freedom Riders were incarcerated in the Mississippi State Penitentiary
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.[22]
On Wednesday morning, May 24, Freedom Riders boarded buses for the journey to Jackson, Mississippi.[34] 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.[35] The third bus arrived at the Jackson Greyhound station early on May 28, and its Freedom Riders were arrested.[36][37]
In Montgomery, the next round of Freedom Riders, including the Yale University chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Gaylord Brewster Noyce,[38] and southern ministers Shuttlesworth, Abernathy, Wyatt Tee Walker, and others were similarly arrested for violating local segregation ordinances.[22]
This established a pattern followed by subsequent Freedom Rides, most of which traveled to Jackson, where the Riders were arrested and jailed. Their strategy became one of trying to fill the jails. Once the Jackson and Hinds County jails were filled to overflowing, the state transferred the Freedom Riders to the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary (known as Parchman Farm). Abusive treatment there included placement of Riders in the Maximum Security Unit (Death Row), issuance of only underwear, no exercise, and no mail privileges. When the Freedom Riders refused to stop singing freedom songs, prison officials took away their mattresses, sheets, and toothbrushes. More Freedom Riders arrived from across the country, and at one time, more than 300 were held in Parchman Farm.[39]
Riders arrested in Jackson included Stokeley Carmichael (19), Catherine Burks (21),[8] Gloria Bouknight (20), Luvahgn Brown (16), Margaret Leonard (19), Helen O'Neal (20), Hank Thomas (20), Carol Silver (22), Hezekiah Watkins (13), Peter Stoner (22), Byron Baer (31), and LeRoy Glenn Wright (19) in addition to many more [10][40]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.[41]
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.[42] Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland said the Womanpower members "were like angels supplying us with just little simple necessities."[43]
Kennedy urges "cooling off period"
The Kennedys called for a "cooling off period" and condemned the Rides as unpatriotic because they embarrassed the nation on the world stage at the height of the Cold War. James Farmer, head of CORE, responded to Kennedy saying, "We have been cooling off for 350 years, and if we cooled off any more, we'd be in a deep freeze."[44] The Soviet Union criticized the United States for its racism and the attacks on the Riders.[16][45]
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.
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.[22] During those months, more than 60 different Freedom Rides criss-crossed the South,[46] 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".[47] 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 11:00pm 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.[48] That arrest and subsequent trial became known as Dresner v. City of Tallahassee, named for Israel S. Dresner, a rabbi among the group arrested.[49] 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.[43] The convictions were appealed to the US Supreme Court in 1963, which refused to hear the case based on jurisdictional reasons.[50] In 1964, the Tallahassee 10 protesters returned to the city to serve brief jail sentences.[47]
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.[citation needed] 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.[51] Forman was among those who were still supportive of Williams.[citation needed]
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.[52] 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.[53][54]
On September 13, 1961, a group of 15 Episcopal priests, including three black priests and twelve white priests, entered the Jackson, MississippiTrailways 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."
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.[56] 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.
Atlanta, GA, Greyhound Bus Station and Restaurant, c. 1940Birmingham, AL, Greyhound Bus Station, c. 1950Atlanta's Terminal Station, origin of a Freedom Ride on the Central of Georgia Railway. (postcard view, c. 1949)
Denotes location a Freedom Rider tested the compliance of the Boynton v. Virginia (1960) decision at a terminal facility only
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, Oprah Winfrey invited all living Freedom Riders to join her TV program to celebrate their legacy. The episode aired on May 4, 2011.[141]
On May 6–16, 2011, 40 college students from across the United States embarked on a bus ride from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, retracing the original route of the Freedom Riders.[142] The 2011 Student Freedom Ride, which was sponsored by PBS and American Experience, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the original Freedom Rides. Students met with civil rights leaders along the way and traveled with original Freedom Riders such as Ernest "Rip" Patton, Joan Mulholland, Bob Singleton, Helen Singleton, Jim Zwerg, and Charles Person. On May 16, 2011, PBS aired a documentary called Freedom Riders.
On May 19–21, 2011, the Freedom Rides were commemorated in Montgomery, Alabama, at the new Freedom Rides Museum in the old Greyhound Bus terminal, where some of the violence had taken place in 1961. On May 22–26, 2011, the arrival of the Freedom Rides in Jackson, Mississippi was commemorated with a 50th Anniversary Reunion and Conference in the city.[143] During commemorative events in February 2013 in Montgomery, Congressman John Lewis accepted the apologies of Chief Kevin Murphy of the Montgomery Police Department; Murphy gave Lewis his own badge, off his uniform, moving Lewis to tears.[144]
In late 2011, Palestinian activists, inspired by the Freedom Riders, used the same methods in Israel by boarding a bus from which they were excluded.[145][146][147]
The 1980s PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize had an episode, "Ain't Scared of Your Jails: 1960-1961", that gave attention to the Freedom Riders. It included an interview with James Farmer.[148]
The title of the 2007 film Freedom Writers is an explicit pun on the Freedom Riders, a fact made clear in the film itself, which references the campaign.
PBS in 2012 broadcast Freedom Riders as part of its American Experience series. It included interviews and news footage from the Freedom Riders movement.[149]
Dan Shore's 2013 opera Freedom Ride, set in New Orleans, celebrates the Freedom Riders.[150]
The Boondocks aired a 2014 episode about the Freedom Rides with the title "Freedom Ride or Die".
The Freedom Riders: The Civil Rights Musical is a theater musical retelling the story of the Freedom Rides.[151] The musical was created by Los Angeles screenwriter/director Richard Allen, and San Diego native music artist Taran Gray. Richard and Taran finalized the music in March 2016, and by April of the same year were asked to perform excerpts from their musical as a BETA Event at the New York Musical Festival (NYMF).[152] The FREEDOM RIDERS musical received NYMF's inaugural BETA Event Award,[153] and is scheduled to return to New York, summer of 2017, for an Off-Broadway run as part of NYMF's festival.[154]
↑ Included 18 participants – C. Donald Alstork, Robert McAfee Brown, John Collier, Israel S. Dresner, Malcolm Evans, Martin Freedman, Arthur L. Hardge, Wayne "Chris" Clyde Hartmire Jr., George Leake, Allan Levine, Petty McKinney, Walter Plaut,[66] Henry Proctor, Ralph Lord Roy, Perry A. Smith III, Robert J. Stone, A. McRaven (Mack) Warner and Edward White.
↑ Included 14 participants – Jerald Bobrow, Herbert Callender,[68] Ralph Diamond, Joyce Lebowitz, Sheree Massaquoi, Edward Morton, Gordon Negen, James O'Connor, Francis Randall, Laura Randall, Leslie Smith, Daniel N. Stern, Dupree White and Benny Winston.
↑ Included 5 participants – John C. Harvard, Sidney Shanken, Woollcott Smith, Herman (Chaim) S. Stern and Hank Thomas.
↑ Included 18 participants – Charles Berrard, Marjorie Dunson, Robert Farrell, Herbert Hamilton, Willie Handy, Holly Hogrobrooks, John Hutchins, Eddie Jones, Robert E. Jones, Robert Paul Kaufman, Ellen Kleinman, Pat Kovner, Ronald La Bostrie, Steven McNichols, Marian Moody, Beverly Radcliffe, Steven Sanfield and Joseph McClendon Stevenson.
↑ Included 19 participants – Robert M. Baum, Edward J. Bromberg, Paul Brooks, Charles Butler, Price Chatham, Paul David Dietrich, James Forman, Richard P. Griswold, Larry Fred Hunter, Edward W. Kale, Frederick Leonard, John Lowry, William Carl Mahoney, Joseph John Michael McDonald, David Kerr Morton, Heath Cliff Rush, Kenneth Martin Shilman, Daniel Ray Thompson and LeRoy Glenn Wright.[74]
↑ Included 15 participants – Gilbert S. Avery III, Myron B. Bloy Jr., James Pleasant Breeden, John Crocker Jr.,[76] James Walker Evans, John Marvin Evans, Quinland Reeves Gordon, James Garrard Jones, John Burnett Morris, Robert Laughlin Pierson, Geoffrey Sedgewick Simpson, Robert Page Taylor, William Adrew Wendt,[77] Vernon P. Woodward and Merrill Orne Young.
↑ Included 5 participants – Julian Carswell, Bertha Gober, Blanton Hall, Evelyn Toney and Eddie Wilson.
↑ Included 9 participants – Joan Browning, Norma F. Collins, James Forman, Sandra Cason "Casey" Hayden,[81]Tom Hayden, Per Laursen, Bernard Lee, Lenora Taitt and Robert Zellner.
↑ Included 5 participants – George Raymond Jr., Doratha Smith, Jerome H. Smith, Alice Thompson[82] and Thomas Valentine.[83]
↑ Included 6 participants – Willie Bradford, Thomas Peete, George Raymond Jr., Claude Reese, Patricia Tate and Jean Thompson.
↑ Included 5 participants – James Burnham, Jerome Byrd, MacArthur Cotton, Thomas Gaither and Joe Lewis.
↑ Included 8 participants – Allen Cason Jr., Albert Lee Dunn, David B. Fankhauser, Franklin W. Hunt, Larry Fred Hunter, Pauline Edythe Knight, William Carl Mahoney and Charles David Myers.
↑ Included 8 participants – James Keet Davis Jr., Glenda Jean Gaither, Paul S. Green, Joe Henry Griffith, Charles Haynie, Robert Lawrence Heller, Sandra Marie Nixon and Peter Sterling.
↑ Included 8 participants – Ralph Fertig,[95] Richard LeRoy Gleason, Jesse J. Harris, Cordell Reagon, Carolyn Yvonne Reed, Felix Jacques Singer, Leslie Word and Elizabeth Porter Wyckoff.
↑ Included 7 participants – Johnny Frank Ashford, Abraham Bassfordt, James Thomas McDonough, Terry John Sullivan, Shirley Thompson, James Robert Wahlstrom and Ernest Newell Weber.
↑ Included 6 participants – John Gager, Reginald Malcolm Green,[98] Edward W. Kale, Raymond B. Randolph Jr., Carol Ruth Silver and Obadiah Lee Simms.
↑ Included 5 participants – Margaret Winonah Beamer, Edward J. Bromberg, Patricia Elaine Bryant, Del Greenblatt and Heath Cliff Rush.
↑ Included 6 participants – Leora Berman, Stephen John Green, Richard P. Giswold, Leon Daniel Horne, Katherine Pleune and Lowell A. Woods Jr.
↑ Included 7 participants – Zev Aelony, Robert M. Baum, Marvin Allen Davidov, David Kerr Morton, Claire O'Connor,[105] Daniel Ray Thompson and Eugine John Uphoff.
↑ Included 5 participants – Elizabeth S. Adler, Bob Filner, Elizabeth Slade Hirschfeld, Karen Elizabeth Kytle and Leon N. Rice.
↑ Included 13 participants – Rita J. Carter, Margaret Ann Kerr, Robert Martinson, Paul Duncan McConnell, Frederick Dean Muntean, Grant Harland Muse Jr., Lestra Alene Peterson, Joan Pleune, Joseph Marion Pratt, Jorgia B. Yvonne Siegel, Buren Lewis Teale, Lawrence Triss Jr. and Thomas Van Roland.
↑ Included 9 participants – Miriam (Mimi) Feingold, Judith Ann Frieze, Margaret Burr Leonard, Samuel Timothy Nash, Henry Schwarzschild, Leon Felton Smith Jr., Theresa Edwards Walker, Wyatt Tee Walker and Melvin Lorenzo White.
↑ Included 4 participants – Thomas Madison Armstrong III, Mary Magdalene Harrison, Elnora R. Price and Joseph Lee Ross.
↑ Included 20 participants – George Marion Blevins, Gloria Leevare-Dee Bouknight, Arthur Brooks Jr., John Luther Dolan, Mary Lucille Hamilton,[112][113] Gordon Lau Harris, Louise Jean Inghram, Frank Johnson, Marian Alice Kendall, Norma Libson, Claude Albert Liggins, Eddora Mae Manning, Robert William Mason, Fank Arthur Nelson, Janice Louise Rogers, John Copeland Rogers, Marica Arlene Rosenbaum, Wayne Leslie Taylor, Richard Thorne and Claire Drew Toombs.
↑ Included 5 participants – Barbara Jane Kay, Robert Allen Miller, Michael Leon Pritchard, Peter Harry Stoner and Leotis Thornton.
↑ Included 9 participants – Robert Earl Bass, Ralph Floyd, Eugene Lee, Marshall Bennett, Miller G. Green Jr., Robert Lee Green, Jesse L. Harris,[116] Percy Lee Johnson and James Wilson Jones.
↑ Included 6 participants – Frank Caston, Frankie Lee Griffin, Alpha Zara Palmer, West Davis Phillips, Tommie Watts Jr. and Mack Charles Wells.
↑ Included 6 participants – Alfonzo Denson Jr., Samuel Givens, Landy McNair Jr., Earl Vance Jr., Hezekiah Watkins[119][120] and Paul Edward Young.
↑ Included 8 participants – Charles Biggers, Elmer L. Brown, William Walter Hansen Jr., John Lowry, Norma Matzkin, Isaac (Ike) Reynolds Jr., Daniel Stevens and Willie James Thomas.
↑ Included 8 participants – Daniel E. Bukholder, Lionel Goldbart,[124] Albert Forrest Gordon, Stephen Greenstein, Jeanne H. Herrick, Saul Bernard Manfield, Ralph Robert Rogers and Lula Mae White.[125][126]
↑ Included 9 participants – Patricia Dale Baskerville, Larry Bell, Tommie Eldridge Brashear, Edmond Dalbert Jr., Reginald Jackson, Edward B. Johnson, Philip Jonathan Perkins, Roena Rand and John Charles Taylor Jr.[127]
↑ Included 11 participants – Leo Vone Blue, Mildred Juanita Blue, Fred Douglas Clark,[120] Jessie James Davis, Gainnel Hayes, Andrew Horne Jr., Erma Lee Horne, Delores Williams Lynch, Henry Rosell, Oneal Vance and Joe Watts Jr.
↑ Included 12 participants – Carroll Gary Barber, Charles Henry Booth, Ray Allen Cooper, Marilyn Irene Eisenberg, Robert Lewis Owens, Jean Estil Kidwell Pestana, David Lering Richards, Rose Schorr Rosenberg, Leon Russ Jr., Leo Vernon Washington, Douglas Albert Williams and Jack Mikhail Wolfson.
↑ Included 8 participants – James Emerson Dennis, Mary Freelon, Phillip Jay Havey, Rudolph Mitaritonna, Shirley B. Smith, Willard Hooker Svanoe, James Edward Warren and Lewis Richard Zuchman.
↑ Included 9 participants – James T. Carey, Francis L. Geddes, Joseph Henry Gumbiner,[131] Mary Jorgensen, Russell F. Jorgensen, Allan Levine, Orville B. Luster, Charles G. Sellers and John R. Washington.
↑ Included 4 participants – Paul Breines, Donna Sage Garde, Joel Ben Greenberg and Ruth Esther Moskowitz.
↑ Included 7 participants – Albert Roy Huddleston, Margaret Ihra, Candida Lall, Morton G. Linder, Michael Harry Powell, Alexander Weiss and Ralph Alan Williams.
↑ Included 4 participants – Alphonso Kelly Petway, Kredelle Petway, Matthew Petway and Cecil A. Thomas.[135]
↑ Included 10 participants – Byron Baer, Hilmar Ehrenfreid Pabel, Catherine Jo Prensky, Sally Rowley, Judith Norene Scroggins, Rick Stanley Sheviakov, Woollcott Smith, Widijonaiko Tjokroadisunatto, Norma Wagner and Ellen Lee Ziskind.
↑ Included 15 participants – Albert Barough, Winston Fuller, Joseph Edward Gerbac, Michael Grubbs, Alan Kaufman, William Leons, Herbert S. Mann, Max Gregory Pavesic, Philip M. Posner, Helen Singleton, Robert Singleton, Richard C. Steward, Lonnie Thurman, Sam Joe Townsend and Tanya Wren.
↑ Included 1 participant – James Robert Wahlstrom.
↑ Included 2 participants – Earl C. Bohannon and Norma Wagner.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later, the Student National Coordinating Committee was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans. From 1962, with the support of the Voter Education Project, SNCC committed to the registration and mobilization of black voters in the Deep South. Affiliates such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama also worked to increase the pressure on federal and state government to enforce constitutional protections.
James Morris Lawson Jr. was an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years.
James Leonard Farmer Jr. was an American civil rights activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement "who pushed for nonviolent protest to dismantle segregation, and served alongside Martin Luther King Jr." He was the initiator and organizer of the first Freedom Ride in 1961, which eventually led to the desegregation of interstate transportation in the United States.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement.
Freddie Lee Shuttlesworth was an American minister and civil rights activist who led fights against segregation and other forms of racism, during the civil rights movement. He often worked with Martin Luther King Jr., although they did not always agree on tactics and approaches.
Diane Judith Nash is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement.
James Luther Bevel was an American minister, leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and convicted child molester. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its director of direct action and nonviolent education, Bevel initiated, strategized, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963 and strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Journey of Reconciliation, also called "First Freedom Ride", was a form of nonviolent direct action to challenge state segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States. Bayard Rustin and 18 other men and women were the early organizers of the two-week journey that began on April 9, 1947. The participants started their journey in Washington, D.C., traveled as far south as North Carolina, before returning to Washington, D.C.
Bernard LafayetteJr. is an American civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee.
The Freedom Rides Museum is located at 210 South Court Street in Montgomery, Alabama, in the building which was until 1995 the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station. It was the site of a violent attack on participants in the 1961 Freedom Ride during the Civil Rights Movement. The May 1961 assaults, carried out by a mob of white protesters who confronted the civil rights activists, "shocked the nation and led the Kennedy Administration to side with civil rights protesters for the first time."
Charles Person is an African-American civil rights activist who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides. He was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Following his 1960 graduation from David Tobias Howard High School, he attended Morehouse College. Person was the youngest Freedom Rider on the original Congress of Racial Equality Freedom Ride. His memoir Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider was published by St. Martin's Press in 2021.
James Zwerg is an American retired minister who was involved with the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s.
William E. Harbour was an American civil rights activist who participated in the Freedom Rides. He was one of several youth activists involved in the latter actions, along with John Lewis, William Barbee, Paul Brooks, Charles Butler, Allen Cason, Catherine Burks, and Lucretia Collins.
Edward Norval "Ed" Blankenheim was an American civil rights activist and one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who rode Greyhound buses in 1961 as part of the Civil Rights Movement, in an effort to desegregate transit systems.
Henry "Hank" James Thomas is an African American civil rights activist and entrepreneur. Thomas was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who traveled on Greyhound and Trailways buses through the South in 1961 to protest racial segregation, holding demonstrations at bus stops along the way.
This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.
Mary Salynn (Selyn) McCollum was the only white female Freedom Rider during the leg from Nashville, Tennessee to Birmingham, Alabama on May 17, 1961.
Meryle Joy Reagon is an American civil rights movement activist born in 1942. In June 1961, she participated in a Freedom Ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi. She is also the former wife of another Freedom Rider, Frederick Leonard and sister of Cordell Reagon.
The Greyhound Bus Station at 219 N. Lamar St., Jackson, Mississippi, was the site of many arrests during the May 1961 Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights Movement. The Art Deco building has been preserved and currently functions as an architect's office.
The Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks, which occurred on May 14, 1961, in Anniston and Birmingham, both Alabama, were acts of mob violence targeted against civil rights activists protesting against racial segregation in the Southern United States. They were carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party in coordination with the Birmingham Police Department. The FBI did nothing to prevent the attacks despite having foreknowledge of the plans.
↑ "With the police holding back the jeering crowd, and with the deacons openly displaying their weapons, the weary but relieved Riders piled into the cars, which promptly drove off into the gathering dusk. 'We walked right between those Ku Klux,' Buck Johnson later recalled. 'Some of them had clubs. There were some deputies too. You couldn't tell the deputies from the Ku Klux.' "Get On the Bus: The Freedom Riders of 1961". NPR. Archived from the original on April 17, 2008. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
↑ Kelly, Brooke. "'61 Freedom Riders Recount Fear, Pride at Mississippi Commemoration." Washington Informer, May 26, 2011: 1+. Newspaper Source Plus. Web. May 30, 2013.
Morgenroth, Florence (1966). Organization and Activities of the American Civil Liberties Union in Miami, 1955–1966 (M.A. thesis). University of Miami. OCLC15796239.
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