Reverse Freedom Rides were attempts in 1962 by segregationists in the Southern United States to send African Americans from southern cities to mostly northern, and some western, cities by bus. [1] [2] They were given free one-way bus tickets and were promised guaranteed high-paying jobs and free housing in an attempt to lure African Americans. In reality, there was no guaranteed free housing or jobs waiting for them. Though some of those arriving were able to find work, most could not. [3]
The Reverse Freedom Rides were a parody of the Freedom Rides which were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Nashville Student Movement in 1961. The reverse rides were organized by George Singelmann, member of the New Orleans Greater Citizens' Council, in retaliation against Northern liberals.
Singelmann viewed the reverse rides as a way of testing the north and proving white northerners were not sincere in their desire for racial equality. In a TV interview Singelmann stated, "They have been crying the sing song on behalf of the Negroes throughout the nation. And of course now when it comes time for them to put up or shut up, they have shut up." [4] Singelmann also viewed the rides as an opportunity to steal some of the press coverage which was continuing to be devoted to the Freedom Rides and as a means to remove some African Americans from the state's welfare roll as he believed they were draining state resources. [5] [6] [7] [8]
At the start of their operation, Singelmann and the Citizens' Council planned to send thousands of African American families to the North. They attempted to secure $100,000 from the Louisiana legislature to fund the plan, but they failed and had to rely on individual and group donors.
The first Reverse Freedom Riders arrived in New York on April 20, 1962. By spring of 1963, the Southern segregationist scheme had been exposed, and the Citizens' Council ran out of funds to continue their operation. By the end of their operation, they had not met their goal but still managed to lure approximately 200–300 African Americans into participating in the reverse rides.
The most common destinations were New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. [8] [9] [6] [7]
The first Reverse Freedom Riders were the Boyd family who were sent from New Orleans to New York City. Lewis and Dorothy Boyd arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City after a 43 hour ride with their eight children. There was no job waiting for them, but the media was. With each ride sent, the Citizens' Council would tip off the press to ensure media coverage. The Boyds were chosen as the first family as they knew the media would be particularly attracted to them, and Singelmann viewed them as high priority to remove from the state, since they already had eight children, were expecting one more, and Lewis Boyd had been unemployed for three years. [10] [1] [3] [8]
In May 1962, the Citizens' Council of America issued a collective resolution supporting Singelmann's Reverse Freedom Rides in response to continued northern press coverage criticizing race relations in the South. The resolution said, "in order to effect an equitable and amicable solution to said racial chaos, friction and sectional division, the Citizens' Council of America hereby urge the various local and state organizations in the South to take necessary and judicious action to expedite volunteer migration of any dissatisfied Negroes from the South." [8] This led to a coordinated multi-state effort by triggering efforts by councils in many other Southern states including Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama. When efforts began in Louisiana, their council's spokesperson announced, "We want to see if northern politicians really love the Negro or whether they love his vote." [11] Historians suggest this statement ignited Southern attempts at collaborating to remove rural African Americans from the South.
The Mississippi House of Representatives announced support for the council's resolution and coordinated removal in a resolution of their own, emphasizing the need to "redistribute dissatisfied Negro population to other areas where the political leadership constantly clamors for equal rights for all persons without regard to the constitution, judicial precedent and rights of the states." [8] [12]
There was adamant support for the Reverse Freedom Rides among many prominent figures in the South; however, once the scope of the council's plan was revealed, much of the other attention to the rides was negative. James Farmer, organizer of the original Freedom Rides, referred to the methods of the White Citizens' Councils as "a device to gain cheap publicity at the expense of personal suffering and deprivation." Civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr and Roy Wilkins expressed similar criticisms. [6] [8]
Some politicians also denounced the plan publicly. Otto Kenner Jr, governor of Illinois compared the plan to Hitler and the Nazis' deportation of Jewish people. Kenneth Keating, New York senator, denounced the Citizens' Council's actions as "cruel and callous". The Reverse Freedom Rides did gain the attention of President Kennedy; however, his response was rather neutral to avoid losing Southern supporters. He said the Reverse Freedom Rides were "deplorable" while clarifying that "there is no violation of law." Kennedy also called it "A rather cheap exercise." [6] [8] Many newspapers also published opinions on the Reverse Freedom Rides. Notably, The New York Times referred to them as "A cheap trafficking in human misery on the part of Southern racists." [13]
Singelmann and members of the Citizens' Council were pleased to see many of the public responses did support his goal of the plan, proving northerners were neither willing nor able to support African Americans. John Volpe, governor of Massachusetts, feared the state being overwhelmed by "impoverished Blacks" and asked for federal legislation prohibiting the rides. Following Singlemann's announcement of the departure of two busses full of African Americans towards Washington DC, The Washington Post published an article saying:
"some of these unfortunate families may come to be sorry they left New Orleans... They are coming to.[ spelling? ] city which by reason of its very size is not always able to deal well with human problems. They are arriving in a community the welfare agencies of which Congress has rendered notoriously inadequate to cope with the problems of poverty… They will be received, nonetheless, with good will, as surely a similar influx would be received by most of the people of New Orleans." [14]
Willie Rainach, the first president of the Citizens' Councils of America, responded to such remarks and inspired continued mobilization of Citizens' Councils throughout the South by saying, "For the first time, we are on the offensive. We have exposed the hypocrisy of the people of the North." [15]
By Southern politicians, newspapers, and activists, the Reverse Freedom Rides were sometimes met with support and praise. For example, Allen J. Ellender, Louisiana senator, also supported the council saying, "I want Negroes from the South to learn they are better taken care of in the South." [16]
Some Southern newspapers, such as the Louisiana press, remained relatively neutral and limited coverage of the rides. Others were rather pragmatic in their reports on the rides. Surprisingly, the segregationist newspaper Birmingham Post-Herald admitted the rides "may be good for a few laughs down here, but it will neither help our cause nor make us friends where we need them most." [8]
In mid-2022, Texas governor Greg Abbott and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, both Republicans, took actions to provide transport for migrant asylum applicants crossing into the United States, sending them to Washington, D.C., New York City, and other locations calling themselves sanctuary cities that take liberal views of enforcing immigration policies. Both Abbott and DeSantis had spoken out against current immigration policies and sanctuary cities. Both governors' actions, notably the Martha's Vineyard migrant airlift, were criticized as officials in the receiving states found that the migrants claimed to have been deceived about what offers they were given; DeSantis' spokesperson has denied this allegation. [17] These actions have been compared to the Reverse Freedom Rides by, among others, CNN, [18] Democracy Now! , [19] The Guardian , [20] The Hill , [21] and NPR. [22]
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background." To combat discriminatory policies regarding interstate travel, CORE participated in Freedom Rides as college students boarded Greyhound Buses headed for the Deep South. As the influence of the organization grew, so did the number of chapters, eventually expanding all over the country. Despite CORE remaining an active part of the fight for change, some people have noted the lack of organization and functional leadership has led to a decline of participation in social justice.
The WhiteCitizens' Councils were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The first was formed on July 11, 1954. The name was changed to the Citizens' Councils of America in 1956. With about 60,000 members across the Southern United States, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of public schools: the logical conclusion of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Oscar James Dunn served as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana during the era of Reconstruction and was the first African American to act as governor of a U.S. state.
This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.
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Harvey Jerome Brudner was a theoretical physicist and engineer. He was the dean of science and technology of the New York Institute of Technology from 1962 to 1964. He was president of the Joyce Kilmer Centennial Commission, and the Highland Park, New Jersey Centennial Commission. He was an early proponent of using computers in the classroom. For many years he wrote on Babylonian mathematics.
Voter Education Project(VEP) raised and distributed foundation funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration work in the southern United States from 1962 to 1992. The project was federally endorsed by the Kennedy administration in hopes that the organizations of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement would shift their focus away from demonstrations and more towards the support of voter registration.
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, "Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. The last of the Jim Crow laws were overturned in 1965. Formal and informal racial segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures (Redeemers) to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-white movement.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall was an American historian who focused on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, Louisiana, Africa, and the African Diaspora in the Americas. Discovering extensive French and Spanish colonial documents related to the slave trade in Louisiana, she wrote Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1992), studied the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana, as well as the process of creolization, which created new cultures. She changed the way in which several related disciplines are researched and taught, adding to scholarly understanding of the diverse origins of cultures throughout the Americas.
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.
Robert Boyd "Tut" Patterson was an American plantation manager and former college football star who is known for founding the first Citizens' Councils, a white supremacist organization, established in Indianola, Mississippi in 1954, in response to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 1966 he helped found Pillow Academy, near Greenwood.
David J. Dennis is a civil rights activist whose involvement began in the early 1960s. Dennis grew up in the segregated area of Omega, Louisiana. He worked as co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), as director of Mississippi's Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and as one of the organizers of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. Dennis worked closely with both Bob Moses and Medgar Evers as well as with members of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His first involvement in the Civil Rights Movement was at a Woolworth sit-in organized by CORE and he went on to become a Freedom Rider in 1961. Since 1989, Dennis has put his activism toward the Algebra Project, a nonprofit organization run by Bob Moses that aims to improve mathematics education for minority children. Dennis also speaks publicly about his experiences in the movement through an organization called Dave Dennis Connections.
Oretha Castle Haley was an American civil rights activist in New Orleans where she challenged the segregation of facilities and promoted voter registration. She came from a working-class background, yet was able to enroll in the Southern University of New Orleans, SUNO, then a center of student activism. She joined the protest marches and went on to become a prominent activist in the Civil Rights Movement.
Black Southerners are African Americans living in the Southern United States, the United States region with the largest black population.
The New Year's Day March in Greenville, South Carolina was a 1,000-man march that protested the segregated facilities at the Greenville Municipal Airport, now renamed the Greenville Downtown Airport. The march occurred after Richard Henry and Jackie Robinson were prohibited from using a white-only waiting room at the airport. The march was the first large-scale movement of the civil rights movement in South Carolina and Greenville. The march brought state-wide attention to segregation, and the case Henry v. Greenville Airport Commission (1961) ultimately required the airport's integration of its facilities.
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.
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The plan of the segregationist White Citizens Councils to ship at least 1,000 impoverished Negroes to the North in 'reverse Freedom Rides' has fallen far short of its goal…
A young Negro, his only luggage a paper bag, was on his way to Cleveland today, the fourth "reverse freedom rider" sent north ...
A proposal to send a 'freedom train' up North carrying 1,000 Negroes on a free one-way ride away from segregation in the South drew new cries of outrage and support today.
Louis Boyd, the Negro father of eight whose family was the first to reach New York on bus tickets paid for by Southern segregationists, did not work yesterday for the third straight day.